


To Infinity and Beyond

by itchyfingers



Series: The It Ain't Over World [6]
Category: Michael Fassbender - Fandom
Genre: Alcoholism, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Explicit Sex, F/M, Fingering, Fluff, Leather Trousers, Love, Marriage, Maybe - Freeform, More Sex, Motorcycles, Nobel Prize, Past Rape/Non-con, Penis In Vagina Sex, Proposals, Sex, Smut, Weddings, kids eventually, life - Freeform, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 15:17:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 28,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2855525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itchyfingers/pseuds/itchyfingers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael and Halla's life together past A Year in the Life. I've posted the first twelve chapters in Interlude before, but I moved them over here so that it's easier to read the stories in chronological order. So, you may want to start on Chapter Thirteen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gone Domestic

Michael had been pacing the floor for the last thirty minutes, looking out the windows by the door every time he heard a car drive by. Halla stood in the kitchen assembling a tray of crudités and other snacks. Michael had pretended to help at first but had given up any semblance of that after almost severing a finger. When the car finally turned into the driveway, Michael threw open the door and raced outside. Steve McQueen got out of his car and looked up and down the wide suburban street. Two kids on bikes raced by, taking advantage of the late autumn sunshine. “So you’ve finally gone domestic. I wouldn’t have expected this from you.”

Michael pulled the big man into a hug. “It’s good to see you. Come in, come in.”

Steve walked into the house and looked around. The formal dining room housed a foosball table and a sideboard and there were still boxes of oddments that hadn’t found a home yet scattered around. “This is nice.”

Halla came out of the kitchen drying her hands on her Hermione Granger t-shirt. “Halla, this is Steve. Steve, this is Halla. I know you two met at the birthday party but I don’t think you’ve really had a chance to talk much.”

There was all the nice to meet yous and shaking hands that occurred anytime two friends of the same person met. Michael grabbed drinks for everyone and Halla placed a tray of nibbles on the coffee table and then sank onto the furry rug at Michael’s feet. His long fingers stroked over her head and found a lock of hair to wrap around his finger.

Halla’s fingers brushed over the fluff of the rug, combing it like the sand in a Zen garden. “So are you here with a new project for Michael?”

Steve grinned at the petite blonde in hot pink galaxy-printed leggings who was resting her head against Michael’s knee. “If I am are you going to kick me out?”

“No. Because it will be brilliant and you shoot quickly so he won’t be gone as long. But,” she tilted her head up so she could look at Michael for a moment and then returned her attention to Steve, “can he please not be evil in this one?”

Steve cocked his head to the side and raised an eloquent eyebrow. “Didn’t like12 Years?”

“I thought it was brilliant,” she hurried to assure him. “It just,” she paused and looked up at Michael. She wasn’t sure how much of this she should tell the director.

Michael’s thumbnail scratched at the damp label on his beer bottle, creating little white furrowed divots in the paper. “She wouldn’t let me touch her afterward.”

She pulled the star on her necklace back and forth repeatedly. “I was raped and watching it brought up a lot of memories.”

Steve leaned forward. “I’m sorry.”

Unlike so many people who had said those words to her, she could tell Steve really meant it. “Not your fault. I just prefer sleeping next to him to yelling at him.” She rubbed her head against his knee.

“Well, the project I have in mind isn’t a rom-com or anything like that–,”

“Yours never are,” Michael interjected.

“But he’s not evil.”

“Well, that’s good.” She reached for a biscuit and got jerked back by her hair wrapped around Michael’s finger. “Ow!” She clapped a hand over the part of her head that had gotten yanked.

“Sorry, baby.” Michael hurriedly unwound her hair and then kissed the sore spot.

“That’s it. I’m pulling the tray over here.” She slid the food closer to herself and then looked up at Steve. “If you want any of this just dig in, because I will eat it all if you don’t.”

Steve looked at the huge platter of food and the tiny woman threatening to consume all of it. “Somehow I doubt that.”

Michael laughed. “Don’t. She can eat me under the table any day of the week.”

She swallowed the food in her mouth before she spoke. “It’s one of those metabolism things.”

“Is that why you can’t sit still?”

Michael looked down at Halla, whose knee was bobbing up and down. “You’ve got data running, don’t you?”

Halla blushed guiltily as she peered up at Michael. “How did you know?”

“You’re fidgety as fuck. Go work.”

She looked at Steve and then back to Michael. “Really? I don’t want to be rude.”

“We’re going to talk business. Go work.”

Halla hopped up, kissed Michael, and then hugged Steve. “It was nice to meet you again.” She grabbed two handfuls of biscuits and ran up the stairs to her office.

“So that’s what got you all domestic and happy.”

Michael turned back to Steve from watching Halla leave, tilting in his seat so he wouldn’t miss a second of her bum disappearing up the staircase. “Yeah. I know, not what you expected.”

“I’d seen pictures of you two. Not your normal type,” Steve eyed him over his beer.

“You gonna give me shit about settling down with a white woman?”

“No. I’m just gonna give you shit about settling down at all. Letchworth? Really?”

Michael’s laughter echoed back from the walls. “I know, not where I ever saw myself either, but she’s at Cambridge for at least a few more years and this lets us meet in the middle.”

A shrill scream emanated from upstairs. Steve jumped to his feet and Michael laughed as he unfolded himself from his chair. “I think that’s a good scream. Don’t worry.” He walked over to the stairs just in time for Halla to jump on him from a few steps up. He grabbed her as she wrapped her legs around his waist.

“It’s patterning!” she shouted.

“That’s fantastic!”

She grabbed his face in both of her hands and pressed her forehead to his. “Oh my god, Michael. It’s patterning. Do you know what this means?”

Michael grinned and shook his head. “Not really, but you sound happy about it.”

“Oh my god.” Her face suddenly drained of all color. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. It’s patterning.”

Michael was still lost. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know! I have to analyze the pattern. But there is one! That means something’s there.”

“Great!” He thought that was the correct answer. ‘Something there’ sounded promising.

She kissed him hard and then patted his shoulders frantically with both hands. “Put me down. I have to go work.”

Michael kissed her one more time and then put her back down on the stairs. He swatted her bum as she turned around and ran back up to her office. He was grinning and shaking his head as he walked back in to where Steve was sitting.

“Everything okay?”

He grabbed one of the fancy tea sandwiches Halla had made before he sat back down. “She’s either found the fifth dimension or a parallel universe. She’s not sure which yet.”

Steve laughed but Michael didn’t and Steve’s smile slowly faded. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No.”

Steve looked at the staircase and back at Michael. “Seriously?”

“Yes.” Michael could never decide whether or not to be irritated or amused that people were so surprised at what Halla was capable of doing. With his friends he gave them the benefit of the doubt.

Steve eyed the staircase skeptically before he turned back to his friend. “Not to put this delicately, but how did you end up with a girl like that?”

Michael scratched at his beard. He’d thought a lot about this and hadn’t been able to come to a conclusion yet. All the twists and turns their separate paths had taken should have made it impossible for them to be a couple, but their paths had kept overlapping, and now it had turned into one path they walked together. “I don’t know. I don’t believe in heaven or hell. But she,” he looked towards the staircase, “she makes me believe in a loving God.”

“Well that’s convenient because this next film, I want you to play a priest. He’s not evil, but he’s not necessarily good either.”

Michael settled in to listen to his next big project while upstairs Halla took the first steps on hers.


	2. Advanced Notice

Octoberish, 2015

Halla plopped down next to Michael on the sofa. “So, you know how you’re brilliant and stuff?”

Michael laughed so hard his shoulders shook. “What do you want, baby?”

She looked at him with wide innocent eyes but couldn’t help the smile that was fighting to break free. “Well, I was just thinking that since you’re all fantastically talented and amazing and things that you should tell your people –,”

Michael interrupted. “I have people?”

She huffed and shoved the hair out of her face. “There must be somebody that tells you when your appointments are now that I don’t yell at strangers for you.”

He nodded sagely. He loved teasing her when she got like this. “Right, those people.”

“You should tell those people that I want to wear this dress to the Oscars.” She shoved her tablet at him.  “It will need to be tailored for my height, so I thought I would give you advanced notice.”

 

 

Michael stared at the couture dress. It was absolutely perfect for her and she’d look beautiful in it. He’d have to get her some amazing dangling earrings to wear along with the gown to highlight her neck. He looked back up at her with a smile. “I love your faith in me, but I might not get nominated.”

“Pish.” She shoved him in the arm. “And tell them I’ll have three inch heels on so they get the hem right.” She kissed him on the cheek and then wandered off again, back to whatever she had been doing before she had started looking for Oscar dresses. He grinned and pulled out his mobile to call his people. Better safe than sorry.


	3. Really Advanced Notice

Michael plopped down on the sofa with enough force to make Halla bounce. She stuck a finger in her book to hold her place and turned to him. “Can I help you with something?”

“So, you know how you’re a genius and super amazing and stuff?”

Halla giggled. “What do you want, caveman?”

He shoved his iPad at her and she looked at the picture of a classic tuxedo. It would be as perfect on Cary Grant as on the scruffy Irishman lounging on her shoulder. “I know it’s different in physics and it could take years or decades, but I thought I’d give you advanced notice. That’s what I’m wearing when you accept your Nobel Prize.”

Halla’s eyes watered and an embarrassed smile made her face flush a delicate pink. Michael kissed her on the cheek and then got up and left, turning long enough to give her a wink before he left the room. Halla stared at the picture for a few more seconds. “I love you!” she yelled.

“I love you too, Dr. Sparklepants!” was shouted from the other room.

Halla went back to reading her book on wave function collapse versus the Schröedinger equation with a grin on her face. She had a Nobel to win. 


	4. A Whole Large Pizza

Halla watched the rain dripping down the windows. The wind was blowing so hard that it almost sounded like hail as it hit the glass. Every once in a while someone would walk down the hallway but other than that, the rain was the only sound. Her screensaver started on its third iteration of fractal recombination as she talked to Michael on her phone. “How much longer are you going to be there?”

“At this point, it seems like shooting’s going to be another two weeks. It’s been one disaster after another.”

“How’s Casey?” One of the grips had been injured when a piece of equipment had fallen.

“She’s good. Back on set and working already, in fact. I signed her cast for her.”

“Well, try and avoid crashing lights or those sandbag weight thingies. Or do they only use those for the theater?”

“The sandbag weight thingies,” Halla could hear his amusement at her terminology, “are mostly for the stage. How’s the fifth dimension?”

Halla snorted. “I don’t know any more. The more I look at this data, the less sense it makes. My brain is hurting and it’s grey and it’s rainy and I haven’t seen the sun in so long I think it may have disappeared.”

“Go home and take a break. Order a large pizza and watch Star Trek.”

Halla made a happy little noise. “That would be wonderful. But I’ve got meetings this afternoon. I might do that tonight though.”

“Hey, what are your plans for New Year’s?”

“I don’t have any, why?”

“Let’s go someplace sunny and tropical. Just you and me, white sand beaches, and crystal clear water.”

Halla bounced in her seat she was so excited. “Yes, please. I will pack this evening.”

Michael chuckled. “Okay sparkles, I have to go be on set now. If it doesn’t run super late, I’ll call you tonight.”

“Ring me regardless. I miss it when you don’t tell me good night.”

“Then I will. And I meant it. A whole large pizza for supper.”

“And I’m going to watch The Little Mermaid and Finding Nemo to get ready for our holiday.”

“Love you, doc.”

“Love you too.”


	5. Love is not a Magic Cureall

Michael heard the front door open. “Hey baby,” he called from his seat in the Star Trek sex cave. He was answered by the sound of her bag hitting the floor.

“I’m going to go take a steam.”

Michael listened to the slow progress of her feet up the stairs and it took a few seconds longer than it should have before he heard the bedroom door open. It took him a few moments of debate between giving her space and checking that she was alright to decide on following her up the stairs. He walked into the bathroom just as she was opening the door to the steam room. “Tough therapy session?”

She looked back over her shoulder at him and nodded. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot from crying.

“Do you want some company?”

“No. I just want to be alone right now.”

“Okay.”

She shut the door behind her and he checked the timer to make sure she hadn’t set it for too long. Twenty minutes. That was good.

He kept an ear out for her and after about twenty minutes he heard the shower turn on. He was sprawled out on the couch when, about twenty minutes later, she came into the lounge wrapped in her star robe with her wet hair braided out of her face. She saw the large pizza sitting on the coffee table, a big bottle of Cherry Coke, and a package of biscuits. Tears welled up in her eyes as she curled up on the sofa. Michael pressed play and the next episode of their Star Trek: Voyager marathon came on the telly. Halla grabbed a piece of pizza and snuggled into Michael’s side. He wrapped an arm around her, kissed the top of her head, and silently kept her company in the dark places of her soul until she could find her way back to her sparkle.


	6. Stars Underfoot

New Year’s Day, 2016 

Michael looked at Halla over the dinner table. The remnants of a glorious seafood feast were scattered across the table. Getting to use mallets as silverware had added a delightful element to their meal. The sun had finally set, glorious shades of indigo and orange ceding to a purpling dark speckled with stars. “You have any room left in there for pudding?”

Halla rubbed her hands over her stomach. “I am so full I think I might actually be sick. But it was totally worth it.”

Michael grinned, all of his teeth on display. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat that much at one sitting before.”

“It was so good,” she groaned.

“Feel like a stroll on the beach to settle dinner?”

Halla had been taking full advantage of every opportunity to walk under the stars since there were different ones visible this close to the equator. She nodded and Michael helped her up from her chair. They stepped off of the veranda and kicked off their shoes before burying their toes in the warm white sand. Halla kept stopping to stare up at the night sky, and Michael finally scooped her up and carried her to the water’s edge. Her light sundress only went to her knees, and Michael rolled up the bottom of his trousers before walking with her a few more steps into the water, letting the bioluminescent plankton illuminate their feet. They didn’t have to say anything as they walked along the shore, water glowing over their feet when the waves came in, and their footprints lighting up and causing a ripple of stars to emerge when they stepped on damp sand. They had taken this walk every night they had been at the resort and neither one of them had grown tired of it.

“So, my little toasted marshmallow, you ready to go home yet?” Tomorrow would be their last full day in the Maldives.

“No. I saw some people yesterday out birdwatching. Maybe I will steal one of their pairs of binoculars and stay here and be a very bad astronomer.”

“As long as I can stay with you, I’ll be good with that.”

“Mmmmm. You can be my personal masseur. I’ll pay you in kisses.” She’d gotten a massage the first day they were there and ended up more stressed than when it had started. She couldn’t relax with someone she didn’t know touching her all over.

“That sounds like a perfect job.”

Halla turned so she was facing him. “Of course, based on your work this week, I think some of my bits are more likely to get massaged than other bits.”

He dragged a fingertip from the point of her chin down to her sternum where it dipped below the neckline of her dress. “You had a lot of tension in your pelvic floor.”

“Which you caused.” She ran her hands up his tan arms and over his shoulders.

He grinned again and grabbed her bum and lifted her so they were almost eye to eye. “You didn’t seem to mind.”

“I didn’t. Don’t.” Her dress hitched up around her thighs as she wrapped her legs around his waist and settled her arms loosely around his shoulders. “Now spin around so the stars look like they’re moving.” Halla dropped her head back as Michael began to spin. She couldn’t decide if it was the sensation or Michael’s laughter that was making her giggle but after a few rotations Michael staggered to a halt.

“Next time you want me to do that, keep me from drinking before hand.”

Halla wasn’t listening. “What’s that?” She pointed to glowing light coming from up the beach. They’d been this way several times and there was nothing up here that should be putting off that amount of light.

Michael turned so he could see where she was pointing. “No idea,” he shrugged. “You want to go look?”

She nodded and they set off to explore. Halla kept spinning around as she walked, dancing to music only she could hear, pulling him into impromptu sambas before she would splash in another incoming wave. Michael would pull her into a tango and dip her far enough that the ends of her hair dipped into the ocean. Finally, they got close enough to the light that they realized someone had set candles in frosted glass cylinders out all over the beach. They varied in size, some just the size of a tea light, others grouped together, and a few at least a foot in diameter.

They stopped on the edge of the display. Halla looked from the candles up to Michael. “Do you get the feeling that we’re interrupting something?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see anyone around.” He looked back over his shoulder. “You want to go see what’s on the table?”

Halla looked around and then at the table in the middle of the huge display. Something was sitting on top of it, but it was far enough away that she couldn’t tell what it was. “Okay, but make sure you don’t knock over any of the candles. And if we get caught, I’m blaming this all on you.”

Michael grabbed her hand. “Deal.”

They made their way through the candles, carefully avoiding kicking any sand that might disturb the glowing lights. They were about half way to the table with Halla stopped. She dropped Michael’s hand and looked back the direction they had come before slowing scanning the arrangement of candles. “You did this!” she jabbed a finger in Michael’s arm.

“I’ve been with you all day, baby.”

“You had someone do this, then.” She poked him again. “This is Vulpecula. These candles form my favorite constellation and the night sky around it, and the different candle sizes reflect the varying sizes of the stars. You did this,” she breathed out as the immensity of the project overwhelmed her. She spun in a slow circle to take it in. “This is gorgeous. You keep finding new ways to give me the stars.”

“They’re what you love most.”

She stopped spinning and grabbed his waist. “You’re what I love most. Even more than the stars.”

Michael’s finger brushed over the gold star nestled in the hollow of her throat. She wore it with the diamond facing out these days. “You sure about that, spacegirl?”

She nodded and he wiped away the tear hanging from her bottom eyelashes before he kissed her. Her mouth was as warm as sunshine and pulling himself away from her was like fighting gravity.

“Now, if you set this whole thing up, then I know what’s on that table.”

“You think so?”

Halla nodded, her eyes sparkling almost as much as the candlelight. “Some sort of sweets. Chocolate cake? Crème brûlée? Exotic handrolled truffles?” She was inching backwards as she spoke and Michael grabbed her before she knocked over a galaxy.

Michael grinned again. His cheeks hurt from how much smiling he’d done in the last week. “I was happy you gorged yourself on shellfish so you didn’t have room for pudding. Though, having one pudding has never stopped you from having a second before.”

Halla clapped her hands and scurried to the table. The table was flanked by two chairs. A white tablecloth fluttered in the gentle breeze. A silver domed cover, shined so bright she could see her smiling reflection in it, covered a platter that sat in the center of the table, surrounded by tropical flowers. She snatched the handle and lifted the cover, uncovering a luscious cheesecake. The edge was topped with fruit that spilled over the edges. Across the center was written the words, “Please say yes.”

Halla’s brow furrowed in confusion as she read them out loud. She turned to Michael. “Say yes to…” She stopped as she realized he was down on one knee. “Michael?” Her voice was shaking and so were her hands.

“I love you, Halla. I didn’t use to think that I’d ever want to be with one person for the rest of my life but then I met you. And you’re crazy and a genius and a mess and absolutely perfect and I never want to think about there being a day where you might not be the most important person in my life. I love you and I want to marry you and grow old together and have you accidentally break my hip when you jump on me when I’m 83 and knock me over. I want to learn how to make pizza with you, and be sneaking packets of biscuits into the trolley when you’re not looking and I want to have kids with you and I love you and will you please marry me?”

Her mouth moved several times before she got any words to come out. “You really want to marry me?”

Michael laughed and nodded. “Yes, Dr. Sparklepants. That’s what this whole down on one knee in a field of stars is about.”

“We’ve never even talked about getting married. Like once, as a joke, and I told you that you had to put something sparkly on my hand before you got any say in where I got married.”

He pulled a ring out of his pocket and held it up to her. The pink diamond glowed as the delicate halo of white diamonds surrounding it refracted the candlelight, casting tiny rainbows over both of them. “I remember I had voted for a tropical island.”

Her eyes kept going back and forth between the ring and his face. “You really want to marry me.” This time there was no question in her voice. She was incorporating a newly discovered fact into her understanding of how the world worked.

He grinned once more. “What do you say, baby? Me, you, forever?”

Halla began to nod and then began to cry. She bit her bottom lip as she threw herself at him. Her arms wrapped around his neck tighter than they ever had before and he held her, sinking down onto the sand until he was holding her in his lap. His hands stroked up and down her back and over her bare arms.

She wiped away the tears that had streaked her cheeks. “We’ve talked about babies, but you never mentioned marriage. I didn’t think you were a marrying kind of guy.”

“I’m not. I’m a Halla kind of guy. I want to be your husband. I want you to be my wife. I want us. So, yes?”

This time it was Halla’s turn to grin. “Yes. As many yesses as there are stars in the sky, and that many more besides.”

He slipped the scalloped band of diamonds on her finger. “I hope you don’t mind that about half of London has tried this on. I needed to see it on a hand. And if you don’t like it, we can go get something different.”

“I love it. It’s perfect. Any bigger and it would look weird.”

“That’s what James said. And Ben. And Steve and Brad and Anne-Marie. And the seven different shopgirls I made put it on.”

Halla giggled and kissed him to stop his worries. “I love it. I love you. And I don’t care how many people tried it on before. The thing that matters is that nobody else is ever going to get to try it on in the future because I’m never taking it off.”

“Never?”

She stroked her hand over his jaw, savoring the feel of his scruff against her smooth palm. “You got me forever, caveman. And I’m used to thinking in billions of years, so when I say forever, I mean it.”

He grasped her face and kissed her once more. It was sweet and hot and left them both a little breathless. They’d tried sex on the beach earlier and both agreed it was better in theory than in practice. Sand had a fancy for getting stuck in uncomfortable places. “Feel like some cheesecake, my Halla?”

She looked back to the table where it still stood uncovered. “Yes.”


	7. Sequin Negotiations Ongoing

Halla knew now why James and Anne-Marie had invited them over for supper the evening after they got back. They didn’t normally plan that far in advance. Once the ring had been properly shown off and hugs and kisses had been exchanged, they all settled in around the table to eat. “Where’s Brendan?” Michael asked. He brought back a giant sea shell for the boy.

“At grandma’s house so I can properly squeal over wedding nonsense with Halla,” Anne-Marie said as she handed the basket of breads to James. “So, have you set a date yet?” she asked Halla.

“Not yet. Sometime in the future?” She shrugged. Her and Michael had been too busy enjoying their last few hours in paradise to worry about anything in the efuture.

“Do you know what kind of a wedding you want?”

“Pink! Pink and glitter! And maybe stars hanging from the ceiling.” She took a drink and nearly choked as a new idea hit her. “On the bridge of the Enterprise!”

Anne-Marie looked at Michael and then back at Halla. “You want to get married on the bridge of the Enterprise?”

“It would be awesome! I totally bet you can do that in Las Vegas.”  Another sip and another barely averted choking disaster. “OOOooooohhhhh, you _know_ him.” She smacked James in the bicep.

James had been too busy trying to keep a straight face as he watched Michael get up and walk into the kitchen where he could react to the idea of a pink glittery Star Trek wedding without Halla seeing him gagging. “I know who?”

“Captain Picaaaarrrd!”

It took him a moment. “Patrick Stewart.”

“Right. Would you pleasepleaseplease ask him if he’ll dress up in his captain’s uniform and marry Michael and me? You can tell him that we’re already,” she pointed her finger authoritatively and did her best impersonation, “engaged.”

James kept a straight face despite Michael dragging a finger across his throat and silently dying behind Halla’s back. “No. I love you, poppet, but I think that’s where I’m going to draw the line in the sand.”

Halla’s face crumpled in disappointment and Anne-Marie patted her hand sympathetically while also sneaking her foot into James’s lap. Michael returned from the kitchen with the butter churn and set it on the table. It gave him an excuse for having gone in the kitchen. James looked up at Michael as he squirmed, trying to put his wife’s foot in a place a little less delicate. “What kind of a wedding do you want?”

“I haven’t really thought about it. I’m okay with some pink. I’m okay with small amounts of glitter.

“Glitter on everything!” Halla waved her breadstick at him.“Everything’s gonna sparkle!”

Michael took a fortifying drink of his beer. “No. No, it’s not.”

“Killjoy.”

“Do you remember me nearly getting emphysema from the amount of glitter I inhaled our first Christmas together?”

Halla sighed. “Yeah.” A few seconds later, her face perked up again. “How about sequins? Those are big enough you can’t inhale them.”

“I’m willing to negotiate on sequins.”

Anne-Marie nodded. Halla had asked her to be a bridesmaid so she was trying to keep track of the ideas they had settled on. “So, pink, with a moderate amount of glitter and/or sequins. Possible stars hanging from the ceiling. No on the whole Star Trek wedding thing.”

Halla frowned at the reminder. “I guess. It’s just, I don’t want a church wedding. Do you want a church wedding?”

Michael swallowed his mouthful of sausage lasagna. “No, but I want something more than just going down to the city clerk or whatever and signing some papers.”

“You could have an outdoor ceremony,” James suggested. “You know, next spring, when the cherry trees are all in bloom so everything would be pink.”

Michael’s eyes narrowed. “Keep that up and you’re not my best man anymore. Besides, I don’t think you can do outdoors in England or Ireland for some reason. Well, we could in Ireland if we find a priest who would perform it, but then it would be a religious ceremony.”

Halla grabbed a piece of ciabatta from the basket. “I’m just bringing up the whole Star Trek idea again here.”

“No. I think we should have a tropical beach wedding.”

Halla frowned and dropped both of her hands in her lap. “I don’t think Patrek’s wheelchair would be able to deal with the sand.”

“Do you think he’ll come?”

She reached for her necklace and worried the small pendant back and forth. “I don’t know.”

“Bermuda has pink sand,” he coaxed.

“I’d like to give him the chance to come to my wedding, or at least make it look like we’re not going out of our way to make it as difficult as possible for him.”

“You could do it at the Tunnels,” Anne-Marie offered.

“What’s that?”

“It’s this place down in Devon where my friend got married. There’s a garden overlooking the beach, it’s registered so you can marry there and there’s an outdoor gazebo. The garden is all landscaped so Patrek would be able to navigate as well. I mean, it’s Devon, not the Bahamas, but at least it’s a beach. And besides, there’s all these awesome tunnels carved through the cliff. It would be fun.”

Michael shook his head. “If we’re getting married on a non-tropical beach, I’m finding one in Ireland to get married on.”

“If you can find us a beach in Ireland that Patrek could access then we’ll get married there.” She shivered at the thought. “In the summer, when it’s more likely to be warm.”

“But do you want a cold beach wedding?”

“Not really. But I’m pretty sure your parents would kill you if we eloped, and exotic travel is difficult for Patrek, and really I just want to be married to you. And I can wear a pink sequined dress down to the registrar’s office and then eat a cupcake and be perfectly happy if I do it with you.”

Michael laughed and refilled her glass for her. “No, you’re getting a full-sized wedding cake, baby.”

“I don’t like wedding cake.”

James dropped his fork. “How can you not like wedding cake?”

“Because they always have gross icing on them or that fondant stuff or they’re so pretty I feel bad about eating them. And cupcakes are half icing and sprinkles and half cake. Wedding cake is never like that.”

“I’ve seen lots of wedding cakes that are made out of cupcakes. You could do that.”

Halla tried to rein in her initial enthusiasm. “I don’t know. Michael’s not a huge fan of cake in general.”

“Then don’t do cake.”

She looked at her fiancé. “Wedding crème brûlée. Or wedding brownies with chunks of chocolate in them.”

Michael grinned, secure in the knowledge that Halla would only ever cheat on him with baked goods. “Or wedding cheesecake.”

She looked back at Anne-Marie, who as her only close girlfriend that was married had been designated as possessor of all wedding related knowledge in Halla’s mind. “Do you think they could stack the cheesecakes?”

Before Anne-Marie could answer, Michael cut in. “How about we just have a bunch of puddings, and I’ll feed you a bit of crème brûlée and you can feed me a bite of cheesecake.”

Halla grabbed Michael’s hand and held it to her bosom in rapturous glee, a movement that practically yanked him out of his chair. “You had me at ‘bunch of puddings.’”

“What can I say? I know the way to my baby’s heart.”

She leaned in and kissed him, and when Michael pulled back he was greeted by the sight of James shaking his head. “What? Like you and Anne-Marie weren’t like this? Aren’t still like this?”

“It’s not that. I just never thought… When I convinced you we should hire her, I never thought it would turn out like this.”

“You had to convince him to hire me?”

“Not that it took more than the suggestion, poppet. He got your number from that dreadful woman and was going to ring you and ask you out to breakfast as a way to apologize, and I suggested that perhaps soliciting the affections of the woman you just got fired on her first day at work was unlikely to be well received, and maybe offering her a job rather than some eggs might be a better way of apologizing.”

“You were correct there. But why an assistant for you two? You never needed them before, and it’s not like you have one now.”

James’s eyes darkened for a moment as he looked at Michael. “I wanted someone in Michael’s house to keep him safe. Someone he liked and wanted to impress. I thought it would get him to straighten out.”

“What do you mean?”

She watched his jaw flex before he answered.“James thinks I was drinking too much.”

“I know you were drinking too much. I had to cover for you twice during filming, and one night you got so pissing drunk you called Dinklage a ‘wee little man’ and asked him where his pot of gold was.”

Halla and Anne-Marie both gasped.

“And then you nearly killed both of us with your fucking crazy driving for that GQ interview after I had to get there early and cover your arse with the bleeding reporter.”

Halla’s mouth was still covered by her hand as she stared at Michael.

Michael darted a look at Halla and then dropped his head. “Yeah, alright, it was getting really bad. I don’t remember saying that to Dinklage, but apparently I don’t remember insulting Halla’s height or her alcoholism either, so I’ve learned that I’m not a nice drunk.”

“You made fun of her for being an alcoholic?” James’s hands clenched on the edge of the table.

“Yeah, I was an arse, I know. She slashed the tires on my car so I couldn’t drive like that and left me in the car park and then when I sobered up the next day, she gave me a whole lecture about how she’ll leave me the next time and she laid down the law and I’ve been good.”

Halla looked back and forth between their friends who were exchanging wary looks. “He has been. It’s been six months since that happened, and he’d been drinking much less even before that.”

“I don’t want you endangering your sobriety for him,” Anne-Marie said gently.

“I’m not. I promise.” Her gaze kept darting between all three of the other people at the table. “I’m safe with Michael.” She refused to back down on this in front of him. “I wouldn’t have agreed to move in with him, much less marry him if I wasn’t, you guys.”

“I have to confess, when you told us you were an alcoholic, my first thought was that this would either fix him or break you, and I put you into that situation without a second thought in an attempt to save my friend. By the time Rotterdam happened, you were my friend too, and I felt incredibly guilty as I sat by your bedside and saw how injured you were. There wasn’t any of your sparkle left and I felt like it was my fault, you know what I mean?”

“It wasn’t your fault. I wasn’t Michael or Henry’s fault either. I screwed up. But I’m better, and Michael’s better. And we’re going to keep each other better.” She reached for Michael’s hand and he caught it and squeezed gently. “And I absolve you of any guilt you feel. Fucking up in Rotterdam was the start of a new beginning for me, and you called me on my shit and made me grow up and made it possible…” Her voice trailed off. “That wasn’t a severance cheque. That was blood money!”

James blushed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you still absolve me?”

Halla snorted and then laughed. “Yes, I still absolve you. You meddle because you love, and if it weren’t for you, the two of us never would have happened.”

“That is true. I expect your first born son to be named after me as a show of your enduring gratitude.”

Michael pointed his beer bottle at James. “The first one is Michael Junior. We’ll talk if there’s a second.”

Anne-Marie’s eyes lit up. “How many kids do you want?”

Halla shook her head. “Let’s change the topic.” She turned to James. “So, how’s that rugby team of yours coming along?”

“Of mine? You mean Scotland’s national team?” The talk turned to sports and Halla gave Michael’s hand a reassuring squeeze. It was one of the benefits of being left handed. She didn’t have to let go of her first love to enjoy her second. Maybe food was her third love. Space was second and then food was third. And tonight, James was responsible for her having all three.


	8. White Dress

Michael was making dinner when Halla came home. She dumped a small, high-end shopping bag on the kitchen counter and climbed up on one of the stools. Then she dramatically slumped over, collapsing onto the marble counter.

Michael shoved her hair away from the hob and went back to cooking. “I take it you don’t have a wedding dress in that bag?”

“No,” she muttered from under her hair.

Michael got a biscuit and put it in her hand. Dinner was still about an hour away. She nibbled on it and sighed.

“What’s in the bag?”

“Complicated underwear.”

“Complicated underwear?”

“Fancy schmancy with straps and things.”

“Things.”

She reached out her arm and flipped the bag over, spilling out onto the counter a mess of black ribbons, hooks, and a little bit of silk and lace. Michael’s hand slowly stopped stirring as he stared at the display.

“That’s lingerie?”

“I thought you might enjoy trying to figure out how to take it off me.”

He smiled and went back to stirring the sauce he was making. “I think you are correct.”

She nibbled on her cookie again.

“Why the funk, baby? Upset you didn’t find the perfect dress?”

She sat up and flung her hair back. “I didn’t even find a close to perfect dress. So, first, most of the samples are too big on me anyway, and then, they’re all poofy and huge skirts and I was going to be a princess but I look ridiculous in them. It’s like I fell in a snow drift.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And then I try the mermaid ones and I don’t have enough hips and boobs to make it convincing.”  She slumped down on the counter again. Before Michael could correct her about her hips and boobs being plenty convincing, she muttered, “It’s not like I should be in a white dress anyway.”

Michael’s knuckles went white around the handle of the spoon. “Do you want to repeat that a little louder, Halla?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Halla?”

“What.”

“Did you just say you shouldn’t be in a white dress?”

“Maybe.”

He turned the heat off under the pan. “Sit up.” Halla slowly sat up but she refused to look at him, instead nibbling on her biscuit and staring out the window. Michael snatched her biscuit from her hand and she glared at him. “Now that I have your attention, you want to tell me why you think you shouldn’t be in a white dress?”

“You know damn well why I shouldn’t.”

His hands rested on his hips. “No. I really don’t. Because this is two thousand goddamn sixteen and you can wear any fucking color dress you want.”

“It’s fine, Michael. I’m going to find something pink and sparkly and wear that instead. It won’t cost as much either. Wedding dresses are ridiculously overpriced.”

“You’re not side-stepping this.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

He stalked around the end of the counter and stopped in front of her. “Too late. The words came out of your mouth. Why don’t you think you can wear a white dress, Halla?”

She scowled up at him from her perch on the stool. “Do you want me to say it?”

“Yes, I do. Say it out loud.”

“Because white dresses aren’t for whores.”

The muscle in his jaw spasmed. “Is that how you still see yourself?”

“There were two other girls there trying on wedding dresses, and one of them is marrying her sweetheart she met in sixth form and the other one is marrying the third guy she ever kissed.How am I supposed to see myself? I can’t even count the number of men I’ve had sex with.”

“You can count the number of men you’ve had sex with. You can’t count the number of men who raped you. There’s a difference.”

“Is there? Because I was standing up on that podium wearing a dress that looked idiotic on me and all I could think was, ‘What am I even doing here?’ I’m not a princess. I don’t deserve the big poofy dress and the veil and all that other stuff. And it’s fine, because really, that’s not who I am. That’s not who we are. You don’t want a tuxedo and a huge wedding and flower girls and all that stuff, and I’m not going to make you have it if you don’t want it. So I’ll find a nice pink dress somewhere that actually fits me at a shop where they don’t think I’m Chelsea’s little sister, and it will be fine.”

He folded his arms over her chest. “It sounds like you’re saying I don’t deserve a white dress kind of girl.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Really? Because when you say that’s not who you are and that’s not who we are, it sort of sounds like it to me.”

She looked down at her lap and picked at her fingernail polish. “I’m just saying it shouldn’t bug me that I look ridiculous in ball gowns because you don’t want that type of wedding anyway.”

“You know what? Fuck what I want.” Her eyes flew back up to his face. “If you want a ball gown, buy a ball gown. Get one custom made so it fits you instead of a runway model. If you want to be a princess, I can be your prince for the night.”

“But it’s your wedding too. I don’t want a wedding you don’t want.”

He clasped her face in his hands, forcing himself to be gentle instead of letting her feel how angry he was. “I don’t give a fuck about the wedding. Really. I want you to be my wife. The wedding is something we have to do so that you can be my wife. I love you. I will do anything, wear anything, show up anywhere you tell me to because you are the person I love. You, and if you didn’t think I knew I was signing up for some princess parties when I asked you to marry me, you’re wrong. So, buy whatever you want. Wear whatever you want. I just have one request.”

“What’s that?”

“Let it be a white dress.”

Her eyes fluttered and the blue drowned in welling tears. “Michael…”

“That’s all I ask of you. Wear a white dress. You have done nothing wrong. You are not a whore. You are not dirty. You are not less than those girls marrying boys they met when they were young. What happened to you was not your fault.”

“If I just hadn’t…”

He placed his fingers on her lips. “It wasn’t your fault. There is nothing you did that makes what happened to you your fault.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him between her legs and then rested her face against his chest. Michael held her tight and stroked her hair as she dampened his shirt with her tears. All he could say was, “It wasn’t your fault.”


	9. Leather Trousers

Halla came out of the bathroom as she finished putting in her earrings. She was singing softly to herself. Michael was sitting on the edge of the bed, tying his shoes. He looked up and his jaw dropped open an inch. He stared for a moment and then rubbed the back of his neck. “Baby, are those leather trousers?”

“Yes.”

“You’re wearing tight black leather trousers.”

Confused at his tone, she looked down to see if they were dirty or something. “Among other things.” She loved her top, a sleeveless metallic gold with a scalloped hem that swung loosely a few inches above her hips.

He growled deep in his throat. “Take them off.”

Halla laughed as she realized the problem he was having with her fashion choices. “No!”

“I’ll let you put them right back on.”

“No. They’re staying on! We have to leave in just a few minutes.” Because she was evil, she swayed her hips a bit as she crossed to the closet and got out the black heels she would be wearing.

“I’ll only take a minute. Maybe forty-five seconds.”

Her bum shimmied as she wiggled her foot into the peep-toe. “Oh, that sounds real enticing.”

“You don’t even have to take them all the way off. Just like down to mid-thigh.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “Are you ready to go?” She wiggled on the other shoe.

Michael fell back on the bed. “You have no idea, baby.”

Halla looked over and saw that the ridge of his fly was more noticeable than usual, and as she walked over to him she could see that it extended down onto his thigh. “Are you even wearing pants?”

“They can only do so much against black leather trousers.” He sat up and grabbed her hips, pulling her close to him. His hands roamed over the slick material before settling on her arse. “Are you wearing pants?”

“A thong. I didn’t want any unslightly lines.”

His head sagged in defeat. “Tight leather trousers and a thong.”

Halla giggled and kissed the top of his head. “Come on, gorgeous. We’re going to miss the train.”

“I don’t care.”

She grabbed his hand and tugged and he reluctantly stood. “James and Anne-Marie got a sitter that sleeps in the guest room so they can stay out as late as they want. Now let’s go have fun.”

He followed her down the stairs. “I can stay right here and have fun,” he grumbled and Halla laughed again.

“Don’t worry, caveman. I’ll make sure you have fun tonight.”

>< 

Halla wrapped her arms around Michael and pressed herself to his back, swaying slightly to the music she could still hear in her head, leftover from a night of dancing and hanging out with friends. His hand brushed against her as he removed his wallet from his pocket and handed his credit card to the hotel clerk. Michael had made the executive decision that they were not going back home tonight, a decision that had started with the feel of her arse in his hand as she sat on his thigh for long stretches of the evening’s conversations, and had ended with sliding his hand under her shirt to stroke her back and discovering that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Halla had dissolved in giggles when she found out about this decision by climbing into the cab and hearing Michael order the driver to take them to the Savoy instead of the tube station. He had given her the side-eye in response and she had laughed even harder.

She followed him to the lift and as soon as the doors whispered closed, his hands closed over her arse again and he lifted her so he could kiss her. Halla’s laugh was enveloped by his lips and she wrapped her arms around his neck as she let him take out all his pent up frustrations on her, grinning against his mouth as she wrapped her legs around him and felt how hard he already was. “Have you been like this all night, caveman?” she whispered against his lips.

Michael didn’t answer. He just clamped his hand around the back of her head and brought her back into the kiss. Her lips parted for him as the doors opened and his hand on her arse tightened as he carried her out of the lift. Halla’s eyes darted around long enough to determine no one was in the hallway and she relaxed against his chest. His mouth was warm and demanding and his walk caused his hip bones to rub against her inner thighs with a devastating effect on her amused detachment.

Her back was pressed against the door as Michael fumbled with the key. She took the opportunity to circle her hips. Michael pushed against her, pinning her in place with his pelvis. “Careful, baby.”

Halla bit her bottom lip and held still, not able to remember the last time she had gotten him riled up like this. The door swung open and Michael wrapped his arm around her waist as he carried her inside and kicked the door shut. He dropped her on the bed. “Off. Now.” She flipped over and crawled to the edge of the bed and reached for the button on his trousers. He already had his belt open and she popped the button and pulled down the zip. “Take off your own, baby.”

“Nuhuh.” She yanked down his trousers and wrapped her fingers around his cock as it stood straight out, long and proud. “I’m gonna take the edge off of you first.” She stroked her pink lacquered nails down the veined shaft. “When you get like this it only takes you a few minutes to be ready for round two anyway, and you have suffered long enough.”

His protest was cut off when she wrapped her cherry colored lips around the tip and sucked. “Fuck, Halla, I’m going to last all of thirty seconds.”

She grinned up at him and he groaned at the sight of her smiling around his cock. His hands closed in her hair as she batted her lashes at him and then slid her mouth down his shaft. It was slightly more than thirty seconds, but it didn’t take long before the combination of Halla’s wet mouth and the suction and her fingers and lips rubbing against his cock turned his hands into fists in her hair. Halla pulled back enough so just the head was in her mouth, suckling sweetly as her tongue worked against the underside, right over that bundle of nerves that made him weak in the knees.

He grunted as he fucked her mouth, trusting in her grip around his cock to keep him from going deeper than she wanted. Her body swayed with each thrust, her leather-clad arse silhouetted against the refined gold of the bedspread, and he grunted again as the fire in his groin burned hotter. His entire body tensed and he roared her name as he slammed out the final few urgent thrusts he needed to come, sending his load shooting in hot pulses down Halla’s throat.

She suckled him for every last drop before slowly letting him drop from her mouth and sat back on her heels, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth with a smile. Michael gasped for breath, his eyes shuttered as ripples of ecstasy still washed over him. “Feeling better, caveman?”

He groaned and nodded. “Now. Take your clothes off.” He didn’t bother opening his eyes to issue the command.

Halla giggled and obeyed anyway, kicking off her shoes before pulling off her top. The sound of the zipper was loud in the room and his eyes cracked open as she began to shimmy the tight leather down her legs. Michael shed his shoes and trousers as he watched her and then climbed on the bed. She fell back against the pillows as he began to tug them slowly downward. He kissed down her legs as the trousers slid out of his way and finally tossed them over his shoulder. “Cute thong,” he said as he unbuttoned his shirt the rest of the way and shrugged it off.

 She pulled at the elastic stretched across her hip and let it snap back. “I like it.”

“If you want to keep it you should take it off now.”

The laughter died in her throat at the rough heat in his voice. She shimmied the purple cotton down her legs and he took it out of her hand before she could toss it aside. He rubbed his thumb over the fabric. “Seems like you’ve been enjoying yourself this evening.”

Color rose in Halla’s cheeks. “This last bit especially.”

Michael barked out a laugh and tossed her knickers aside. “Well, let’s see if I can continue the trend.” He spread himself over her and she wrapped her arms around him again. His kisses were slightly less hungry now but Halla could feel him against her stomach. He was still semi-erect and she knew it wouldn’t be long before he was ready to take her. Patience had never been her strongest trait and she looped one of her legs around his thigh and pressed up against him, rubbing the silken shaft against her soft stomach. He moaned into her mouth and every kiss, every stroke of his hand over her breast, every movement of her lips down his throat was accompanied by the movement of their bodies against each other. Halla whimpered as she lifted her hips, bracing her feet against the bed to give herself the traction she needed. “Please, Michael,” she whined as she squirmed under him, trying to get his cock where she wanted it.

“Oh, you think I should just give in so easily after you teased me all night long?” She could feel his smile against her collarbone before he nipped at her skin.

“Yes!” She shoved at his shoulders in an attempt to get him to slide a bit further down.

Michael grinned and shifted his weight, leaning on one elbow as he reached between them and wrapped his hand around his cock. He ran the head of it along her wet slit. “Is this what you want, Halla?”

“Yessss,” she hissed as his cock rubbed against her clit. He rocked his hips, keeping up the teasing glide of his shaft against her damp folds.

“Say please.”

She stuck her tongue out at him but did as he said. “Please.”

“Please, what, baby?” He pressed inside her the barest amount and then pulled back before she could thrust her hips up to take him deeper.

“Please, Michael, fuck me with your cock.”

He pressed inside her a bit more but his fingers closed around her hip, keeping her from taking anything he didn’t want to give her. “You have gotten so good at using your words, baby.”

“Then fuck me, damnit. Please, I need you.”

He sank in a bit deeper. “You need me, do you?”

Halla whined and shoved at his hand but his grip was firm. “Yes, I need you. You and your kisses and your touches and your tongue and your fingers and your great big hard cock and please, love, please…”

The word frayed and disappeared as he sank himself into her until he couldn’t go any deeper. “Is that what you need, baby?”

She nodded a few times, her mouth still hanging open as she adjusted to him inside her.

He smiled against her throat and ran his tongue against her warm skin. “Good.” He let go of her hip and she instantly wrapped her leg around him, lifting herself even closer to him. “Now,” he nipped at the tender flesh right below her ear, “hold on.”

Halla grabbed at his back right before he began to thrust. She had begged him to fuck her and he did just what she asked, driving into her hard and fast, angled just right to hit her g-spot over and over. She called his name, softly at first, but getting louder as she felt her body tense under his. All the muscles in her stomach tightened and Michael grabbed her leg and tossed it up onto his shoulder, deepening the angle at which he thrust into her. She scratched her nails down his chest as a new wave of heat washed over her. She cried out his name again, sounding on the verge of panic as her body drew taut. He slipped his fingers over her clit and she dug into him, her nails digging into his sides, her heel on the back of his thigh. She was silent though, her head falling back as her body convulsed once and then went still except for her pussy, wrapped around him and begging for what he could give her. It only took him a few more frantic thrusts and he gave in to her pleas.

Michael collapsed onto the bed, his chest heaving for air just like hers. Halla’s head lolled to the side and she smiled. “Feeling better?”

“Uhhuh.”

“Gonna need thirty minutes before the next round?”

His eyebrow rose. “You think I need thirty minutes before I can fuck you again? I thought you were the smart one in this relationship.”

She stuck her tongue out. “I’m just wondering if I should call room service now or wait until after round three.”

He laughed. “Call room service. You’ll need to keep up your strength.”

She giggled and crawled over him to grab the phone off the nightstand. She stayed sprawled over him, their belly buttons kissing, as she talked to room service. He stroked her bum slowly as he listened and when she finally hung up he gave her a smack on the cheek. “How long did they say it would be?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“Plenty of time for round three.” He grinned at her and she laughed.

“Fine, but this time I get to be on top.”


	10. The One

Halla walked into the house and followed the sound of Michael’s hello to the lounge where she flopped down beside him on the sofa. She took the glass from his hand, sniffed the clear liquid and then took a drink.  Michael watched as she slowly turned the glass in her hands and finally took another drink, her eyes focused on the far wall.

“You alright, baby? You look a little shell-shocked.”

“I bought a dress.” She was locked in a thousand year stare.

Michael turned so he was facing her. This was not a reaction he had expected from her. “Good?”

“It’s white.”

“Thank you.”

“And I bought a veil.”

He scratched at his cheek, wondering if all girls were like this when they picked out their wedding dress or if there was something he was still missing. “It sounds like you’re all set.”

She finally turned to him and grabbed his hand. “You’re going to have to wear a suit and a tie. Maybe even a tux. I’m so sorry.” Her eyes were huge as she stared at him.

Is that what she had been worried about? Telling him he had to wear a suit? His peals of laughter did little to reassure Halla. “No worries. I told you whatever you wanted, I’m willing to do.”

“It’s because of the dress. I kept trying on all these beaded and sparkly and short cute dresses, and none of them were ‘the one.’ I kept hearing ‘you’ll know it when you see it.’ And I wouldn’t even have tried it on,” she clutched his hands as she babbled on in panic, “except Chelsea decided I needed to stretch my horizons since I wasn’t finding what I liked and I never would have picked it out for myself but I put it on and stood up on that podium thing and I looked in all the mirrors, and instead of being a little girl playing dress up, I looked like a bride.” She took a deep breath and blew it out and was suddenly calm. “I looked like a woman. And the sales lady put a veil on me and I just knew.”

He knew she was seeing herself dressed in white again. “You found the one.”

She nodded. “And I’ll have lots of opportunities to wear fun sparkly dresses with you but this is my one chance to look like a bride. I think we have to have a real wedding now instead of just eloping and having cupcakes.”

Michael leaned in and kissed her softly. “You deserve a real wedding.”

“I’ll keep it small.”

He gripped the back of her neck and leaned his forehead against hers. “You make it as big as you want.”

“No flower girls, I promise.”

“You’ll break Erlin’s heart.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Erlin’s heart isn’t the one I’m worried about.”

“Baby, let’s have a wedding. Me and you. Our own way. Whatever we want.”

A smile slowly spread across Halla’s face and the sparkle came back into her eyes. “What do you want?”

“Cheesecake, and amazing music, and getting to feed you puddings until there’s no room left in your belly.”

“That sounds perfect.”

“And one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

Michael told her and she clapped her hands and giggled. “That is totally going to happen.”

And it did.


	11. Homework

Michael stood in the doorway to the bedroom watching Halla with interest. She had no idea he was there. Her eyes were closed and her heavy breathing masked any sound he may have made in the hallway. She was practically flat on her stomach, tilted just enough to one side for her hand to reach under her. The way the ruffles on the legs of her knickers fluttered with each rotation of her hips only emphasized what she was doing.

He slowly walked closer, careful to not make any noise. He’d never seen her pleasuring herself before; she’d never needed to when he was around. Her legs were spread enough that he could see her fingers rubbing little circles over her clit under the damp fabric. Her fingers dipped downward and he caught his breath as two of them pressed inside her. He stroked his stiffening cock through his grey sweatpants as he watched the fingers move in and out, slowly running his hand up and down the thickening shaft. He had no idea why she was doing this, but god, she was lovely.

Her cheeks were flushed and her lips parted, panting out quiet sighs of happiness. She moved her hand again back to her clit and he grinned as she moaned his name. The circles quickened and her hips started grinding against the bed, adding more pressure and friction. Her breathing got louder, each gasp coming farther apart, and he could hear a tinge of a whine to it now, just like when they would be making love and she was getting close.  She whimpered his name again as she pushed two fingers inside her again and his cock twitched in his hand.

He kept his hand on the outside of his sweatpants, knowing that if he touched skin to skin there was no way he would stay quiet enough not to disturb her. A few pumps in and out and she went back to her clit. Her lip had acquired the hue of fresh berries from her biting it and the wet fabric of her knickers trembled with the speed of her fingers. Then her head lifted from the bed. Her mouth fell open and her eyes squeezed shut in the peculiar expression unique to the face of someone who is so engulfed in pleasure that it almost looks like pain. She let out a stifled shriek as her body went taut. Her fingers moved erratically over her clit as her legs trembled and then she collapsed onto the bed and was still.

Michael held his breath and didn’t move. He felt guilty now for having watched her and the moment she opened her eyes opened she would catch him with his hand wrapped around his dick. He let go of his cock and tried to adjust it so it wouldn’t be as noticeable but the soft fabric of his sweats did nothing to disguise what was going on. He looked up and saw Halla watching him.

“You trying to hide a cucumber in there?”

He laughed and gave up. “Sorry for interrupting your play time.”

She shrugged and rolled onto her back. “I left the door open. You’re fine.”

He stretched out on the bed next to her and splayed his hand across her stomach. Her delicate skin was a never-ending source of delight for him. “You know, if you uh, ever need a hand with that,” he grinned and left the rest unsaid.

Halla pulled the waistband of her knickers away from skin and gestured at them with her chin. Michael’s grin got a bit more sensual as his hand slid down from her stomach and cupped her. “Fuck, baby. You are soaked.”

“Of course I am. I was thinking of you,” she said as she grabbed the front of his shirt and brought him close enough to kiss.

“You know you can always come tell me you’re horny and I’ll come take care of you.” His hand was rubbing slowly back and forth, just teasing her, but her hips were already rocking.

“I know, but it was actually my homework.”

His hand stopped and he eyed her suspiciously. “Your homework is to masturbate?”

Her cheeks flushed as she giggled and nodded.

“Damn. Maybe I should have gone to university after all if that’s the kind of homework you get.”

“It’s from my therapist. Something about reclaiming my own personal sexuality independent of a partner.”

He started stroking again, pressing hard enough that his middle finger dipped between her labia. His fingertip grazed over her clit and her entire body jolted. “Do you have any more homework you need to do right now?”

She shook her head and leaned in to kiss him again. Her hand let go of his shirt and slid down his chest to his sweatpants. With an open hand she rubbed the length of his cock. His hand trembled against her for a moment and when Halla got back to the top of his cock, she slid her hand inside his sweats and repeated the motion. “If you want, you can help me with some extra credit though.”

Michael groaned as his hand clenched around her pussy. “Just a tick.” He sat up long enough to strip off his shirt and shed his sweats. Her knickers quickly joined the pile of clothes on the floor and he knelt between her knees. Taking his cock in his hand he rubbed the head of it over her clit.  “Okay, now tell me what you need me to do.”

“Just fuck me.”

Michael’s eyes sank shut for a moment and then he opened them again. He grabbed her hip in one hand and lifted her until she was at the perfect height and then with one urgent thrust he sank himself into her. She was so wet that he slid right in and her eyes rolled back in her head as he bottomed out. “Like that?”

She nodded, her eyes still closed. “Now fuck me.”

He dropped down onto his hands on either side of her head. “Gladly.” The slick sound of her pussy accompanied the slap of his body against hers. She brought her feet up until they were right against her ass and lifted against him, pressing upwards as he pushed down. His hand closed over her breast, squeezing and kneading the small swell of flesh until her nipple was as pink as her lips.

“Harder,” she whispered and he hooked his arms under her knees and pushed them back until they were even with her breasts. The new angle allowed him to hit her g-spot with every snap of his hips and she cried out. Each thrust was echoed with a new gasp.

“Fuck, Michael,” she whimpered. Her hands clawed at his hair until she managed to grasp his head and pull him down for a kiss. She bit at his lips and then panted, her mouth open, his right above hers and barely touching.

“Come for me, baby. I’m not going to last much longer.” He shoved his thumb in her mouth, leaving it there just long enough for her to get it wet and then pulled it out with a resonant pop. Halla grabbed her leg and held it back as he let it go and pressed his thumb against her clit. One two three circles against it and her thigh spasmed. He felt the tremor ripple through her and grabbed for his own orgasm. He could feel it tingling as it sat in the base of his cock. His balls pulled up against his body as her pussy began to convulse and he slammed into her a few more times, each one slower than the previous, his grunts quieting as each pulse of come flooded her.

Her chest heaved as she struggled to breathe again and his moved in time with hers. She didn’t let him go until she felt him begin to soften and then her arm dropped to the bed. He rolled over and sprawled next to her.

He finally caught his breath enough to talk and he pulled her against him. “I’m kind of liking this being a good student thing, baby.” He grabbed her thigh and hooked her leg over his. She laughed and he kissed her while he slid his hand up the back of her thigh. When he got to her ass he squeezed and then slipped his hand between her thighs. His fingers slid against the wetness dripping from her, slicking the inside of her thighs and her labia. Carefully he slid one finger inside her and she clenched around it. “What do you say we go for honors, baby? I know you’re not done yet.”

He slowly pulled his finger out and then slid two in. She whimpered against his chest and clenched helplessly around his fingers. “Yes,” she hissed.

He kept his fingers pumping in and out. Her wetness dripped into his palm and down his hand as he fingered her, twisting and stretching them inside her. He suckled on her bottom lip as she writhed against him, grinding against his hand. He rubbed his thumb over her tightly puckered ring and she gasped.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No.” She shook her head frantically and her hair got in his mouth. “Don’t go any further, but don’t stop.”

He kept rubbing her, fucking her with his fingers, and whispering to her about what a hot sweet little pussy she had as her moans got higher and higher in pitch. Her nails dug into his bicep. “Michael!” she pleaded.

He pushed a third finger into her and she screamed. Her entire body went taut in his arms and he kept fingering her, working her through her orgasm until she was trembling. Carefully he slipped his fingers from her and then gently touched her clit. Her head fell back and he could see the tendons in her throat standing out in relief as she tried to scream but there was nothing there to come out.  His fingers kept up their gentle quick touches as her body jolted with every caress and her hand grabbed helplessly at his bicep, managing mostly just to slap it repeatedly.

“You want me to keep going, baby?”

She nodded, unable to say anything and he held her body firmly against his chest as he kept stroking her clit. A few seconds later he changed his mind and rolled her onto her back. He grabbed her leg closest to him and hooked it over his thigh before he slid two fingers back into her. His other hand pressed down on her stomach, holding her firmly so she couldn’t squirm. The thumb slipped in between her slick folds and stroked her clit as he fingered her.

Halla clawed at the sheets, and her hair, at the pillows above her head, helplessly seeking for something to give her a grasp on reality. Michael crooked his fingers deep in her and she cried out as he found her g-spot and plundered it with each thrust of his hand. “Come on, baby. I know you’re right there on the edge. Come for me.”

Tears rolled from the corners of her eyes and down into her hair. “Michael,” she pleaded again, this time as a whisper.

He stretched his fingers wide inside of her pussy, scissoring her open as he pulled out and then when he pushed in again it was with three fingers. The extra little stretch and burn was just what she needed and her body bowed up off the bed. Her throat was beyond being capable of making a sound and just lifted her hips, straining against Michael’s hand, frozen in place as he stroked her through her orgasm. A new rush of her fluids drenched his hand and he coated the sensitive skin with them, petting her slowly until she collapsed again.

She grabbed his wrist and yanked his hand away. “Too much,” she gasped out. “Too much.”

Tremors still rippled through her as he pulled her against his side and grabbed the blanket and pulled it up over her. He wrapped both arms around her and held her securely. Her breathing slowed and steadied as she stopped shaking. After a few minutes he looked down at her and found her sound asleep. With a smile, he slipped away from her, replacing his body with a pillow. She made a snuffling sound as she burrowed into it and he smoothed her hair away from face so he could see her still pink and glistening face. He kissed the top of her head and then headed downstairs. He would make something to eat because she would be starving when she woke up. And maybe, after they ate, she could give him some tutoring. These were the kind of classes that made him want to be a good student.


	12. Hide the Laptop

Michael walked into the living room and Halla slammed her laptop shut. She only barely managed to keep from flinging it across the room as she hurriedly tossed it to the other end of the sofa and then threw a pillow over it.

“That was subtle,” Michael said with a grin and collapsed into this chair, stretching his arms over his head so a strip of his stomach was visible between his t-shirt and jeans. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing.”

“Uhhuh.” Michael folded his hands behind his head and waited.

Halla was instantly fascinated by the chandelier. And the trees out the window. And her manicure. Maybe she should repaint her fingernails. Every thirty seconds or so, she darted a glance at Michael who was still watching her, his hands behind his head and obscenely long legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankle. And grinning.

She managed to pick off all the nail polish on her thumbnail before she finally gave in. “Fiiiiiiine. I’ll tell you what I was doing, but you can’t laugh!”

“You know I can’t promise that with you, baby.”

She scowled at him but conceded her defeat with a deep sigh.“I was voting.”

An eyebrow arched. “Voting? For what?”

“It was an online poll.” She started picking off the nail polish on her other thumb.

“An online poll for what, baby?”

She mumbled a response under her breath. Michael came over to the couch and sat down next to her.

“What was that?” He leaned in so his ear was right in front of her mouth,

“Sexiest Man of the Year,” she muttered.

Michael leaned back and scratched his cheek a few times. “Were you voting for someone other than me?”

Halla shook her head.

“Then I don’t see why you’re hiding it.”

“Iiiiiiiii…..mayhavevotedmorethanonce.”

“What?” He’d heard her perfectly but this was too funny to resist.

Her cheeks pinked. “I may have voted more than once.”

“May have?”

She nodded. Three fingernails were devoid of pink glitter by this point.

“May have as in absolutely did vote more than once.”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered.

Michael chuckled and leaned back against the arm of the couch. “How many times did you vote, baby?”

She held up two fingers.

His forehead wrinkled. “You voted twice?” Hurling a laptop seemed an overreaction for two votes.

She shook her head.

“Is that a roman numeral? You voted five times?

She giggled. “No.”

“What does it mean, then?”

She grabbed the throw pillow and buried her face in it. Michael couldn’t understand the muffled sounds she was making.

“Sit up, baby.”

She turned her head so she was facing him, but kept lying on the pillow on her lap. “Two hours.”

“Two hours?” He didn’t understand at first and then his eyes widened as comprehension dawned. “You’ve been voting for me for two hours?”

She nodded slowly as her face turned bright pink.

Michael couldn’t contain himself. He began to laugh. And laugh. And kept laughing. He was doubled over and clutching his stomach with tears in his eyes when Halla stood up and smacked him with the pillow. He quickly grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back down onto his lap. “Thank you for voting for me.”

She stuck her tongue out and he bit it. And didn’t let go until she kissed him, and he kissed her back, and they spent the next two hours not voting. At least not in an online poll.


	13. The Wedding

Halla’s dress made her look like a bride, but neither she nor Michael really wanted a wedding. They just wanted to be married to each other. And so they planned for a marriage celebration instead of a wedding, discarding lots of the traditions that the bridal magazines insisted on and added in things that mattered to them. They rented a beautiful estate in Ireland and invited all their friends and family to join them for several days. There were no planned activities, but there were things to do, and games were invented including a rousing game of golf cart polo with croquet mallets that left one golf cart being chased by perturbed geese and the permanent loss of at least three croquet balls. It was casual and fun and the only scheduled event for the five days was the actual wedding ceremony at six pm Friday evening.

There was no bride’s side or groom’s side. They had the chairs arranged in a spiral so that they would get to walk through all of their guests, and everyone would be closer to where Michael and Halla would stand. Halla told her attendants to wear a pink dress they felt pretty in; Michael told his to wear a suit if they weren’t wearing a kilt like he was. She didn’t want a bouquet she would have to carry around so she ordered a wrist corsage of pink ranunculus and wildflowers. Michael wore a small pink ranunculus and a sprig of eucalyptus in his button hole. They held the wedding at the old brick mill at the estate. Baskets of eucalyptus and wildflowers were placed all around the room, along with big thick candles on old wooden dressers and tables. Garlands of herbs and wildflowers were draped along the windows, and moss encrusted pots of shamrocks were tucked in nooks and crannies.

Once everyone was seated, Halla made her way down the stairs from the room where she had dressed to where Michael stood waiting for her. She was so nervous that her hands were trembling, but when she saw his jaw soften as he smiled, and then when his hand covered his face so she couldn’t see his jaw quiver, all the butterflies left her stomach and she hurried down the final few steps so she could be with him.

“You weren’t kidding about looking like a bride.” He stroked the veil that fell down her back, all the way past the edge of her train. “You are more beautiful than I even imagined you would be.”

“You’re pretty good looking yourself. You should wear kilts more often.”

“It took James  _and_  my mother to help me get all of this on correctly.”

Halla giggled and adjusted his sporran. “I think your outfit may be more complicated than mine.”

“It just might.” He stopped and stared at her again. “You are beautiful, Halla. So amazingly beautiful. It’s usually your clothes that sparkle, but tonight, it’s you. It’s like you’re glowing.”

Halla felt her face heating from his adoration. “Well,” she pulled up the hem of her dress enough to show him her pink glittery high heels, “it’s not  _just_ me.”

Michael laughed. “I knew there had to be glitter on you somewhere.”

“I wouldn’t be me without it.”

He took her hand. “You ready to go get married?”

Halla nodded. “Let’s do this.”

Michael had been in charge of the music and had hired a local ensemble that did traditional Irish music after The Chieftains had informed him that they didn’t do weddings. Together they walked the spiral to “[I’ll Walk Beside You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaRfBH8IOIc)” over a path of flower petals that Erlin had scattered on her way down the path. Halla had wanted glitter, but the site manager had refused. When they reached the center of the spiral, it was just the two of them and their officiant.

“I’d like to welcome you to the wedding of Halla and Michael. This is a rather unusual wedding for me as they want me to do as little as possible. So I am here to fulfill the legal requirements and that’s about it. With that said, I’m going to go sit down now and let this proceed.”

Michael wrapped his arm around Halla’s waist. “Thank you all for coming to our wedding. I never saw myself getting married, even though I have a wonderful example of a happy marriage in my parents. I never thought I’d meet someone like Halla, though, and even though we never talked about getting married, I wanted her to know how much I loved her and so I asked her to marry me.”

“And I said yes!” Halla interrupted and the audience laughed.

“She did. And that’s when it got confusing, because as much as we wanted to be married, we had no idea what to do for a wedding.”

“ _You_  had no idea what to do. I had very specific ideas.”

Michael shook his head. “Getting married by Jean-Luc Picard on the deck of the Starship Enterprise doesn’t count.”

Halla waited until the laughter died down to add, “I also wanted to cover everything in glitter.”

“You did, and no wedding site within 1000 kilometers was okay with that.”

Halla sighed dramatically. “True. But what we realized was that we didn’t have to have a wedding like everyone else’s. We could have a wedding that wasn’t about my obsessions or Michael’s idea of getting married in F1 cars at 250 miles an hour.” There was more laughter. “We went back to the old traditions for ideas and picked things that meant something to both of us.”

“In Iceland they have multi-day wedding parties, so that’s why we invited you all to be with us this whole time. Also, weddings are traditionally held on Friday, which is Frigga’s day, because she is the goddess of love and marriage,” Michael said.

“And the men took Michael out for his junggesellenabschied,” she paused and looked up at Michael who nodded and smiled. “I’ve been practicing that word for weeks. Yes, um, they took him out for that thing two nights ago, and last night was the polterabend and we’d like to thank you all for your enthusiastic participation in smashing all the dishes.”

“Best wedding tradition ever,” James called out to much laughter.

“We really want to thank all of you for making the time to be with Halla and me for this wedding. It’s safe to say that without all of you, neither of us would be standing here. I can’t imagine my life without Halla in it. She gave me a reason to get my act together.”

“And if it wasn’t for Michael, I literally don’t know if I would be here. He has kept me sober through sheer stubbornness at times and I know he’ll continue to do so.” She wiped a tear away.

Michael nodded and both of their mothers joined Michael and Halla. “Take each other by the right hand,” his mother told them. Michael and Halla faced each other and after accidentally extending the wrong hand, held each other’s hands as their mothers tied their hands together with silken ropes in a traditional knot.

“Handbinding is a tradition in both of our heritages, so we thought it appropriate to use it today to symbolize the bond we’re making.”

Halla looked up at Michael and tried not to laugh. Both of them were remembering the string of ideas Michael had come up with for other things that they could use the ropes for in the future. Michael gave her a quelling look which just made her giggle.

“You ready for this?” he asked.

She fought to get a straight face. “Yes.” A giggle broke out past her firmed lips. She took a deep breath and let it out. “Yes.” This time she didn’t laugh.

“I, Michael, take you Halla,”

_“And I Halla, take you Michael,”_

Glitterbutt

_Caveman_

Trekkie

_Speed demon_

Stupid genius

_Selfish bastard_

Doctor Sparklepants

Not a Fuckweed

Sassy

_Fassy_

Baby

_Mine_

To be my wife.

_To be my husband._

“I promise you, Halla, that I will fuck up. I promise you that just because I fucked up doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I will always love you. And I know you’ll be patient with my fuck ups, and I promise I’ll be patient with yours.”

“I promise you, Michael, that we will fight. We will fight because what we have is important and it’s worth fighting for instead of giving up. I promise you I will never run and I will never walk away. I will stand and fight for you because I love you.”

“I promise you, Halla, that I will honor you and that I will never expect you to obey me.”

“I promise you, Michael, that I will stand by you when you are healthy and outside the bathroom door when you are sick.”

“I promise, Halla, to get nominated for awards so you have a regular reason to wear sparkly dresses.

“I promise, Michael, to make sure you have lots of opportunities to wear your motorcycle helmet with me sitting behind you and holding on not too tight.”

“I promise to love you forever.”

“And I promise to love you for longer than that.”

Michael carefully pulled her wedding band off of his pinky and slipped it onto her finger. “With this ring, I thee wed.”

Halla took his from her thumb. “With this ring, I thee wed.”

The officiant stood up. “I now legally pronounce you man and wife.”

He wasn’t even allowed to say, ‘You can now kiss the bride.” Michael didn’t need permission for that. He cupped her face in his hands as she smiled up at him. The motion pulled her hand up with his. He grinned, showing every one of his teeth as she grabbed onto the lapel of his jacket with her bound hand and lifted up on her toes. He kissed her once, a quick peck, and then bent in and let his lips linger. Halla couldn’t stop smiling even as he kissed her. She kissed him softly, one long tender kiss that said everything they hadn’t figured out how to put into words. Michael pulled back, changed his mind, and went back in for another kiss.

Finally, when his lips were the same glossy pink as hers, he stopped kissing her. He looked out at their audience. “Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go have a party!”

They exited to applause, cheering, and the ringing of the silver bells they had left on each seat.

The reception was a giant party because that is what they had both wanted. Heavy wooden tables decked with runners of more eucalyptus, wildflowers, and candles surrounded the dance floor on three sides. A huge dessert table sagging under the weight of every kind of sweet imaginable was on the fourth side along with space for the band to set up. Thousands of tiny star-shaped lights hung over head. Dinner was corned beef or halibut along with the traditional accompaniments. They also served ramekins of macaroni and cheese because they both really like it and it was their wedding. Toasts were offered throughout the night by whoever felt like saying something. Once the dinner was over, most people spent their evening on the dance floor or wandering back and forth from the dessert table to their chair. Michael and Halla had their first dance as the band played, “[How Long will I Love You?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSgU0gNL2Ac)” and spent the next few hours feeding each other sweets and getting cut in on by everyone as they tried to dance with each other. It was loud and crazy and they laughed until their faces hurt and ate until their bellies ached. Michael had a Guinness with dinner and that was it.

Finally, after hours of celebrating, Halla whispered in Michael’s ear that she was going to go change. Elsie and Chelsea and Anne-Marie and her mom followed her back to the room she had gotten dressed in where she removed her gown – her veil had come off hours ago – and slipped on a white sparkly mini-dress with a thin pink belt and biker boots. Her mom pulled one of the flowers out of her corsage and tucked it behind Halla’s ear.

They walked back to the reception together. Halla’s mom kissed her on her cheek and the other women went inside first to give Halla her own entrance. She stepped inside and Michael immediately saw her. He grinned and rubbed the back of his neck. “Damn, woman!”

Halla laughed and held up the pink motorcycle helmet she was holding. “Ready to go, caveman?”

“You know it.”

There was more bell ringing and sparklers going off as they ran to Michael’s motorcycle. He got on first and tucked his kilt under his thighs. Halla clambered on behind him and strapped on her helmet while Michael put on his. She slipped her arms around his waist as he started the engine and the two of them rode off into the night with millions of stars overhead.

“Michael?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, Halla.”

“I know you’re heading to whatever hotel you booked us into, but can we take the scenic route?”

“Aren’t you going to freeze in that dress?”

“Says the man in the kilt. No, I’m fine. In fact, I’m more than fine. This is the happiest I’ve been all night, just me and you and a motorcycle under the stars. It reminds me of that first night we went riding together.” That was the night she realized he might be her future.

“That was a good night.” That was the night he knew he had a chance to make her love him. “Of course we can take the scenic route. Not much to look at in the dark, though.”

“I don’t need anything to look at. It’s enough just to be with you.”

He squeezed her clasped hands for a moment. “You’ve got me forever now.”

She tightened her arms around him. “And I’m never letting go.”


	14. A Conversation of Souls

Halla kicked off her biker boots and dropped her pink motorcycle helmet on the sofa before she ran into the bedroom and jumped up on the huge bed.  She bounced and laughed and gleefully clapped her hands. Michael stood in the door way to the bedroom in his kilt and watched his bride bouncing on the bed with a grin. “You want some company up there or are you having fun all by yourself?”

“Come bounce with me and then I’ll go put on the lingerie I bought special for tonight and we can do another kind of bouncing.”

Michael’s grin showed all of his teeth as he sat in an armchair and untied the long laces of his shoes. If he and Halla ever renewed their vows, he was going to wear jeans and a leather jacket. Not that Halla hadn’t looked unbelievably beautiful in her wedding dress, but the full kilt experience was a once in a lifetime deal for him. Halla showed no signs of slowing down as he finally climbed up on the bed and bounced a few times.  

He stopped bouncing. “This isn’t really a kilt friendly activity.”

Halla clapped her hands over her mouth and nose as she laughed. “You have stuff flopping around under there?”

“Yeah, I do.” He held out his hands to her and she grabbed ahold of them but kept bouncing.

“You want me to go put on my fancy knickers so we can get on to the next part of the festivities?”

“I don’t think I want to let go of you that long.”

“They’re cute,” she wheedled.

“You’re plenty cute enough without adding little bits of lace and ribbons.” She pouted at him and he laughed and gave in. “Go put them on.”

She clapped her hands and jumped off the bed. It took her a moment to figure out where their luggage had been placed when it had been dropped off for them earlier, but she found what was looking for and ran into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. Michael took the opportunity to finish undressing and was stretched out on the bed, propped against the headboard, when Halla emerged from the en suite.

She struck a pose in the doorway, one arm stretched up over her head and resting on the frame, and the other hand resting on her hip. “Well?” She arched an eyebrow at him.

Michael whistled in appreciation. She had finished taking her hair down and it fell around her face in a cloud of soft waves, partially obscuring the pink blossom tucked behind her ear. He had been right about her lingerie. It was bits of lace and ribbon the color of Halla’s lips after he had kissed her for an hour.  The bra was barely there, more a suggestion of a bra than anything, with lace that appeared to be concocted from enchanted cobwebs and fairy laughter held together in the middle with a soft bow. Similar bows were on the hips of matching lace knickers. He held up a finger and rotated it and she turned around for him, playfully sticking out her bum that was covered in ruffles. The effect was completed by stockings with several inches of the same ephemeral lace at their tops. He held out both hands to her. “C’m’ere.”

Halla tried to walk sexily towards him but began to giggle after a few steps. Giving up on that idea, she ran the final few paces and jumped onto the foot of the bed and then walked towards him, wobbling slightly from the squishy surface as she stepped on either side of his legs. She took his hands and settled comfortably and familiarly onto his lap, wiggling a few times just for the effect it had on him. “Hello, husband.” She giggled and gave him a quick kiss.

He caught her face in both hands and pulled her into a longer caress. Their mouths moved with tender abandon until Halla had twined her arms around his neck and his arms were wrapped around her back, securing their bodies to each other. “Hello, wife.” They were just far enough apart to be able to focus on each other’s faces.

“If someone went back in time to the day that we met and told me I was going to marry the guy that got me fired from my job, I would’ve fallen over laughing.”

“If someone went back in time to that day and told me I was going to get married at all I would’ve called  _them_ a fuckweed.”

Halla laughed and stroked her fingers along his jaw. “Yet here we are.”

His arms tightened around her. “Here we are. Married.”

“And I’m perfectly supremely exultantly happy.” She interspersed the words with kisses to his cheeks and his forehead.

Michael’s hands moved slowly over the soft skin of her back, tracing up and down her spine so she would arch into him. “So am I. I really believe you saved my life, Halla.”

The quiet intensity of his words calmed her and she placed her hand over his heart. “It’s only fair. You saved mine, after all.” She kissed him and he kissed her and they didn’t say anything else for a long time. Not with words at least. But they held each other and touched each other and kissed each other. Kisses are one of the ways that souls talk to each other. It was a simple conversation, though no less meaningful for its simplicity. All they said was I love you.

And when the bows came undone and the bits of lace were tossed aside, Halla’s back was warm against the smooth cold silk of the comforter and Michael’s skin was hot against hers. They kept saying I love you with interlocked fingers as hands were held to the bed, and with Michael’s wedding ring digging into her fingers, and with her stocking covered legs wrapped around his hips, and with more kisses over soft skin and hard muscle. And in the end, they used words again. And still they said I love you.


	15. Tubes

Halla’s mobile rang and Elsie picked it up off of the pile of things Halla had left with her in the waiting room. “Hello Michael, it’s Elsie.”

“Hey. Halla’s got you screening her calls for her or something? Did I piss her off without knowing it?” he laughed.

“Nah. She’s just still back with the doctor. She was running behind schedule.”

There was a long pause before Michael spoke again. “What doctor?”

Elsie shrugged and stuck her finger in the magazine she was reading so she wouldn’t lose her place. “I don’t know her name. The one that’s doing the procedure thingy.”

“What procedure is she having done?”

This time it was Elsie’s turn to pause before answering. “She didn’t tell you about this?”

“About _what?_ ” The word was a gun-shot.

Elsie stared at a poster showing what the insides of a nine month pregnant woman looked like as she tried to come up with an answer. “Ummm, I don’t think this is my place to share, so I’ll just say she’s fine, it’s outpatient, and I’m here to take her home because she’ll still be a bit sedated when she’s done.”

“Have her ring me the minute she has some privacy, would you?” He didn’t wait for an answer before he ended the call.

* * *

Halla stared at her mobile with a frown as she sat propped up in her bed. She knew she should be demonstrating more concern than that, but she was still floating a bit from the pill the lovely person at the clinic had given her. While her face wouldn’t actually show it, inside she was dreading the conversation that awaited her. Knowing the longer she put it off the worse it would be she called Michael.

“Hello.” He could have frozen all of Arendelle with that one word.

“Hi, love,” she cheerily answered.

“Don’t.”

Her false smile melted away. There was a long silence except for the sound of him breathing through his nose. “So, how much trouble am I in?” she finally asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything apparently. I didn’t know you were seeing a doctor. I didn’t know you were having a procedure done. I don’t know what the procedure was. I don’t know how you are. Are you sick? Was it elective? What the fuck is going on, Halla?”

She winced away from the phone as he yelled. “I had my tubes blown out.”

“That sounds like something you would do to an auto.”

“My fallopian tubes. They have scar tissue from… from before. And I had the scar tissue removed so hopefully, when you get back in a few weeks, we’ll be ready to start trying.”

There was silence on the other end of the line for a few moments. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want you to worry about it. Or me. I mean, none of it is your fault. You shouldn’t have to deal with it.”

“Halla, this isn’t your fault.”

“But you shouldn’t–,”

He cut her off. “Halla, look at your left hand. You see that ring there? It’s my license to worry about you, okay baby?”

It took her a long time to agree. “Okay,” she whispered.

“ _I_ should have been the one sitting in the waiting room, not Elsie. _I_ should have been the one driving you home and tucking you into our bed and making you a pot of fucking tea.”

“Elsie bought me a packet of hobnobs.”

“I can buy you hobnobs, too. Don’t do this kind of shit when I’m not there to take care of you.”

Halla flopped over and wrapped her arms around Michael’s pillow. It had stopped smelling like him. “You’ve had to worry about me so much already though. I was trying to save you from this part.”

“Don’t save me from you or your parts. Any of your parts. Especially the ones you don’t like.”

She sniffled but blamed the tears on the ache in her belly that the pain pills hadn’t made completely disappear. “I’m sorry.”

She heard him take a deep breath and blow it out. “Now tell me; they blew out your tubes, so, we’re good to go now?”

“Yeah. I stopped taking the pill, and the scar tissue’s gone, so now we try and get pregnant.”

“I think I can manage that.”

She snorted and heard him laugh in response. “Yeah, I figured you might be okay with that part.”

“You’re going to look even cuter than usual when you’re pregnant with your little tummy all round and sticking out.”

“I’m trying not to think that far ahead. It still might not happen.” She burrowed further under the blankets. In the dark it was easier to imagine that he was actually there beside her.

“Well, if it doesn’t happen this way, we’ll try something else. It’ll happen eventually.”

“You sound pretty sure about that.”

“I am. I have a feeling about it.”

Halla yawned, making a little squeaking noise at the end of it. “I’ll trust your feeling then.”

“You get some sleep, but Halla?”

She opened her eyes which had somehow closed. “Yeah?”

“No more hiding things like this from me.”

“I won’t.”

“You better not. I won’t be so forgiving next time.”

She sniffled again. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“Well, you can kiss it all better in a few weeks. Get some rest, sleepyhead.”

“Love you, speedracer.”

“Love you too, sparklebutt.”


	16. Purest Shimmering Iron Maiden Shirt

Michael’s shoulders tensed as he pulled his car into the garage and clicked the remote to shut the door. As much as he was looking forward to seeing Halla again, this homecoming left things to be desired. He was still fuming about her having surgery without telling him. The longer he brooded on her deception, the angrier he got.

The door into the house flew open as he was pulling his bags out of the car. He dropped them as Halla barreled into him, making him fall back against the side of his auto as she embraced him with all the energy of a puppy getting his first experience of the outside. An  _Iron Maiden_ t-shirt and pink floral leggings wearing puppy. He picked her up and kissed her and she wrapped her legs around his waist. This was standard for her. He always used the loo at the airport before he headed home because she wouldn’t let go of him for a few hours after he got home.

“It’s like you missed me or something.”

She braced her hands on his shoulders so she could look him right in the eyes. “Nah. Didn’t miss you at all.”

He squeezed her arse in both hands, relishing the feel of her after such a long absence, and nodded. “I can tell. You don’t look the least bit excited, glitterbutt.” He gave a playful squeeze and then paused for a moment, a curious expression on his face, before gripping her more tightly. “Though judging by the feel, you’re not wearing your glittery ones. Actually, by the feel of it,” he rubbed his hands thoroughly over her hips and down to her upper thighs, “I would say you’re not wearing any.”

Halla’s cheeks were pinker than they had been a few moments before. “Would you believe me if I said they were all in the wash?”

He shook his head, all stubble, and jaw, and grinning teeth. “I haven’t been gone long enough for you to go through all your knickers.”

She pressed their foreheads together and squinted at him. “How about I just forgot to put them on and it has nothing at all to do with you.”

Michael sucked his teeth as he considered this alternative. “Them all in the wash was more believable.”

“Whatever.” She kissed him soundly again and then wriggled against him until she was settled, her head on his shoulder and the rest of her wrapped tightly around him.

He tightened his grip on her, hand firmly holding her bum, and grabbed his luggage with the other one and carried everything into the house. Without putting Halla down, he squirmed out of his jacket and then sat on the sofa. There were planetary models hanging off of each arm of the chandelier that hadn’t been there when he had left, and the coffee table was stacked high with printed out journal articles, a handful of scattered ink pens in different colors, and a plate of biscuits sparkling with icing and silver jimmies. The array almost distracted him from a pizza box that was sticking out from underneath the piece of furniture. “So,” he looked her up and down, “how are you feeling?”

“Like sparkles and sugar.”

He may have sat down, but she couldn’t sit still. Not that her kinetic state was that different from normal. “That good, huh?”

She nodded rhythmically, dancing along to music only she could hear.

“Have any more surgeries in the last few weeks?”

Her dancing faltered and stopped. “No.”

“Really?”

“I would have told you.”

His chin lowered. “Really?”

“Yes, really.” She squirmed to get off of his lap but he grabbed her hips and held her in place.

“How am I supposed to know that?” This was the question he had wrestled with over the last few weeks. It was the root of the anger he couldn’t eradicate.

“I would have told you!”

He waited a few seconds as he scrutinized her face. He’d always thought her an awful liar, but maybe she had learned, or maybe she was better at hiding things from him than out-right lying. “I don’t know how to believe you.”

“I promised I wouldn’t hide doctor stuff from you anymore.”

“What non-doctor stuff are you hiding?”

“Nothing!” She tried to get off his lap again but he wouldn’t let her go.

“You’re not running away from this, Halla. Is anyone harassing you at work?”

“No.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“No!”

“Would you tell me if you had?”

“Yes! You’re my crisis plan.”

They glared at each other, both of them mirror images of anger and frustration. Michael gnawed on an errant hangnail for a moment as he thought about what he should say next. “I have a breathalyzer in my bag.”

“You bought a breathalyzer?” Each word came out as a separate sentence. They each dripped with disbelief and froze into icicles of indignation.

“Yeah.”

She shoved against him and when he kept holding on, she slapped his hands. “Let me go.”

Michael reluctantly loosened his grip and she fled his lap. He was surprised to not hear her feet on the stairs or a door slamming. Instead, several moments later, she returned, dragging his suitcase behind her.

“Where is it?” She dumped the bag on the floor, right in the middle of the fluffy white rug.

“What?”

“The damn breathalyzer. Do you want to test me right now?” She squatted beside the huge bag and yanked the zipper.

He took the suitcase away from her before she destroyed it. “I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t drink on the day I came home.”

“Then you know fuckall about my drinking, because I don’t stop with one drink. If I started again, you would know, because I would either be so drunk I could barely walk or I wouldn’t be here at all.”

“So you’d just run the fuck away again?”

“I would check myself into fucking rehab,” she screamed. Her entire body trembled with rage and her cheeks were a deeper pink than the flowers on her leggings. She took one deep breath and blew it out through her nose, and then another. The third one she managed to blow out through her mouth. After a few more, she spoke again. “I’m not going back down that road. I have too much riding on me staying sober.”  

“Well, then that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about, I guess.”

“What do you want from me, Michael? I promised I won’t have surgery without telling you again. I won’t drink and if I do I’ll call you on my way to rehab. What else is there?”

“I don’t know. That’s what’s scaring me. I don’t know how to make a list of all the things you’re supposed to tell your partner, because I’ve never had a partner who didn’t want me for a partner.”

Her hands balled into fisted and she rested them on her hips, making her elbows as pointy as her chin. “I  _want_  you as my partner.”

“Then fucking act like it! Right now I’m scared that you’ll get pregnant, and we’ll have a kid, and that kid will get sick and you wouldn’t let me know.” She started to say something, but he bowled right over her. “That you and little Mikey Jr. are going to be in hospital because he’s got some virus and I won’t know shit about it until some fucking pap takes a picture of you leaving with the kid, and the only way I’ll know which one of you was sick is because he’ll still have the wristband on. Right now I don’t trust you enough to have a baby with you because I’ll miss enough of his life just by working without you actively hiding things from me.”

His voice echoed back from the walls as she blinked several times. “You don’t want to have a baby with me?”

“Not right now. Not with you like this.”

All the color disappeared from her face and after a few moments where the silence vibrated it was so loud she disappeared from the room. Michael sank down into his chair and buried his head in his hands. That had gone even worse than he had expected. This time he heard her stomp up the stairs and a door slam shut. Welcome fucking home.

A few minutes later she stomped down the stairs. The front door opened. Before he could ask where she was going, she said, “I’m going to a meeting.” The door slammed shut.

Okay, well, she was using her crisis plan. At least that part of her recovery was holding. He rubbed his face and yawned. Maybe he would go take a nap while she was gone. He was exhausted anyway, and this way he wouldn’t have to think about being the cause of her needing to use her crisis plan.

* * *

“Hello, my name is Halla and I’m an alcoholic.” She paused to let everyone respond. “It’s been thirty-three months since I had my last drink. I got in a fight with my husband today because he says he doesn’t trust me enough to have a baby with me. Not because of my drinking, but because I hide things from him when something goes wrong. And it’s not like it was anything big. It was an outpatient procedure. I would have told him when he got back from …” She caught herself. No one here asked, but she was fairly sure several of them knew who her husband was. “From his business trip. I was going to tell him but I didn’t want to worry him while he was gone. I don’t like him worrying about me.”

An old woman with hair so silver it should have been studded with gemstones snorted loudly.

Halla rubbed both of her temples. Her head had throbbed since she had slammed the door of her house and she was barely managing to not scream or cry. Or both. Did she really want to deal with this right now? She just wanted to get out all the words choking her heart. She frowned at the woman. “What is it, Talia?”

“You’re lying to yourself.”

The people in the circle all looked at her. Talia was the honorary grandmother of the group. She’d been sober forty years and still attended meetings every day. Halla was half convinced it was because she was bored and meetings were better than television for entertainment. Talia called people on their shit when they gave her the opportunity. You could ignore her snort of derision and she would stay quiet the rest of the time, but once you asked her to open her mouth, you had to be prepared to deal with her giving you what she considered the unvarnished truth.

“How am I lying to myself?”

“It’s not about him worrying. You don’t give a shit about him.”

They may have had a fight, but nobody, no matter how old and wise, was going to tell her she wasn’t in love with her husband. “I love him.”

“Not near as much as you love yourself.”

She should never have let Talia get started because she obviously had no idea what she was talking about. “I don’t love myself. I’m in therapy because of how much I hate myself.”

“That is what it is. But if you don’t want to call it love, call it pride. You are so damn proud of yourself. You with your shiny new life and new husband and new job and you’re a total success. The people who don’t know about your past think you’re perfect. The people who do are relieved that you’ve finally gotten yourself together. You’re hiding things because you don’t want to remind anyone that it wasn’t always like it is now. You can’t bear to think of showing anyone else the slightest chink in your armor or giving them the slightest reminder of your past, especially your husband. You want to be an entirely different person for him than the one you were. You’re polished and perfect now.”

Halla rubbed her head again. Being analyzed by Miss Marple wasn’t nearly as charming as it appeared on television. “I’m not polished and perfect.”

“You not asking for help is what got you started drinking, sweet child. You’re still not asking for help.”

Why would no one believe her? She was doing fine. She had her life under control. Finally, everything was working out the way she wanted. “I’m not drinking!”

Talia nodded and took a sip of her tea. She always brought an electric kettle with her to meetings and made tea for everyone. She only brought a porcelain cup for herself, though. “There’s more to being healthy than staying sober, you know. Just because you’re not drinking now doesn’t mean you’ve actually dealt with the problem that started you drinking years ago. You need to get over being so obsessed with not inconveniencing people who love you before you find another way besides alcohol to destroy your life, because if you keep hiding things from him, you will destroy your marriage.”

That was it. She was done taking advice from this old biddy. “Like you have any room to talk. You’ve been married four times.”

Talia loudly sipped her tea and stared at her with eyes that should have been rheumy with age but were darker than wood and clear as a mountain spring. “You’re exactly right. I don’t know anything about happy marriages.” She paused and stared into her teacup like she could divine the future in the dregs. “I know a hell of a lot about miserable ones, though. Learn from my mistakes, sweet girl. Stop hiding things from him and learn to ask for help.”

* * *

Halla flipped on the light in the darkened bedroom. “Wake up.”

Michael opened one eye and grimaced as the light bludgeoned him into awareness. “What time is it?”

“It’s about six.”

He yawned so wide his jaw popped. “Your meeting went for four hours?”

“I went for a walk afterwards.”

“A walk?”

“I  _walk_.”

He rubbed his face again. He’d been right in the middle of a dream and now his head hurt and his mouth was dry. “I wasn’t planning on sleeping that long.” He sat up and stretched. “I thought you would have been back before now.”

“I have a fake twitter account.”

He stopped mid-stretch, both arms still above his head. “. . . Okay.”

Halla flopped face-first onto the bed and mumbled into the blankets.

“I can’t hear you.”

She rotated her head so she was facing him but squeezed her eyes shut. “I use it to practice my Icelandic.”

“Can’t you do that on your normal Twitter?”

“Noooooooooo.” She dragged out the word as she flipped her head back and forth. The sound wavered as her mouth repeatedly got smushed into the blanket.

The bile in his stomach bubbled. “There’s more to this than just practicing Icelandic, isn’t there?”

She didn’t even bother saying yes. She just nodded.

“Do you pretend that you’re someone else?”

She nodded again.

“Who?”

Halla held out her hand. In it was her phone. She had her twitter pulled up. He grinned when he saw her profile picture and his stomach settled down again.

“You pretend to be Riley Blue?”

“Nooooooooo,” she replied weakly. “But I’m 23 and live in London and I moved here a few years ago from Reykjavík.”

“Are you a DJ too?”

“I’m a florist.” She sounded like she was confessing a mortal sin.

Michael laughed and took the phone from her. He scrolled through several tweets. He couldn’t understand a single one of them but then his name caught his eye. “What does this one say?”

He held it out to her and she glanced at it. “Mig langar að stunda kynlíf með Michael Fassbender.”

“Thank you, LiteralGirl. What does it mean?”

The look on her face was the same one a puppy would wear if it had been caught piddling on the floor. “I want to have sex with Michael Fassbender.” She smooshed her face into the blankets again.

Michael couldn’t stop laughing. He kept scrolling through her tweets and saw his name regularly repeated. “You have a fake twitter to talk about  _me_.”

“Shut up.”

“Do I have a large fanbase in Iceland?” Based on the arrows and formatting she was having conversations with several people about him.

“None of your business.”

He laughed again. “I think, technically, it is my business.”

She snatched her mobile back from him. “The point of this whole thing is that I wanted you to know that I have a fake twitter account because I’m not going to hide anything from you again.”

Michael immediately sobered. “Oh. Thank you.”

“Even the embarrassing stuff.”

“Well, good. It will be nice not to be the only one embarrassing this family.”

“You can’t tell  _anyone_. Not your sister. Not James. No one. Do you understand me?”

“I’ll take it to the grave, baby.”

She fell on her face again and pulled the blanket over her head.

Michael smiled before he lay down next to her. She didn’t seem inclined to recognize his presence, so he finally pulled the blanket away. “Thank you for sharing that.”

She turned so she was looking at him. “Elsie comes over the day you leave and takes all the alcohol out of the house, and then she comes by the day you come back to replace it before you get home again.”

His stomach lurched again. The last time she had asked someone to remove alcohol was during their disastrous stay in Rotterdam. “How long has that been going on?”

“About a year. I had a bad day and you were away filming. I think it was Apocalypse but I’m not sure. I couldn’t get ahold of you on your mobile and I called her and she came down and spent the night here with me to keep me from drinking. She took all the booze with her when she left. Now she does it as a preventative measure.”

“You could ask me to clear out the fridge before I leave. Or just throw it away. I can replace it.”

“I know, but that’s not the point. If I did that, then you would know I was struggling and I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Halla.” He brushed her hair back from her face.

“I know,” she hurried on before he could continue. “My wedding ring is your license to worry. But still. I have this idea in my head that I have to be tough. I have to conquer my problems by myself, and I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

“You  _are_  tough.”

“I’m about as tough as a fairy fart,” she said, completely disgusted with herself.

Michael guffawed and then pressed the side of his hand to his mouth when she punched him in the arm. She was right. It didn’t even hurt. When he’d regained his composure, he smiled. “I think you’re pretty damn tough to have overcome what you have, and to have accomplished what you have.”

“I can’t get the ‘you can’t disappoint him’ voice to shut up, though. I’m trying, but I’m so scared of losing you that it won’t shut up.”

“I will never be disappointed in you for asking for help.”

“That’s what you  _say_ , but the voice in my head tells me that if you really knew how much help I need, if you saw  _all_  the damage, you would leave.”

“I wouldn’t.”

She looked away and rubbed her thumb over the fingernails of her other hand, stroking the smooth surface of her lacquered nails. “You did that one time,” she said, so soft he could barely hear her.

He felt like he’d been punched in the gut, but not by Halla. By someone twice his size with fists of steel. “I was stupid and wrong and I learned my lesson.” How long would she have the scars from what he had done to her? No wonder she kept secrets from him. “What else are you hiding from me? You can tell me and I won’t leave.”

“I go to extra meetings while you’re gone. That’s the last thing.”

“I think it’s good you go to extra meetings when you need the help. Why would you be embarrassed about telling me that?”

“Because I don’t want you to worry about me while you’re gone, or that you leaving makes things harder for me, and I’ve spent the last two hours wandering around yelling at myself over this and I don’t want to hide things or inconvenience you or make things harder or anything like that –”

“You do –”

She clamped her hand over his mouth. Her lotion smelled like strawberries and cream. “Just listen right now, okay? I have to get this out.” Michael nodded and she glared at him. He nodded again, trying to appear as serious as possible while fighting the urge to lick her palm, and she slowly removed her hand. “Okay, so I spent the last two hours wandering around trying to get the stupid voice in my head to shut up and I kept playing with my wedding ring and thinking about how it’s your license to worry and I was thinking about our wedding, and our hands getting tied together and the old words about a man and woman becoming one flesh, and I know it’s all metaphysical nonsense but there’s some truth to it anyway, like, sex obviously, but we’re one unit now.”

She played with her ring, watching the diamond orbit her finger like she was the sun instead of looking at him, but she was talking, so he didn’t press the issue. Talking and not running and not hiding. Someday she would look him in the eyes, but this was enough for now.

“It’s us. So, if I ask you for help, I’m not really asking someone else. You’re part of me. So I’m just asking myself for help and obviously I am going to help me and I can be tough and get help all at the same time and you can’t hide things from yourself. Well you can, and it’s denial, but not really. And I know that’s dumb and it doesn’t really make sense, but that’s the way I have to think about it for now if I’m going to ask for help and not hide things because I want you to trust me and you don’t trust me now because you have to worry about what I’m doing or not doing and not telling you about, and at least this way you’ll have concrete worries instead of abstract ones.” She sighed, deflating like a leaking balloon, and buried her face in the comforter again.

Michael slipped his hand under her shirt and stroked the rose petals masquerading as her skin. “Can I talk now?”

Her hair moved in what he interpreted as a nod.

“I’m proud of you.”

She made a sound that was the embodiment of disbelief.

“I am. You may not think you’re tough, but I do. Tough and brave and strong. If Iceland were a monarchy, I would totally vote for you for queen.”

She rolled over so she could see his face. “You don’t vote for queen.” A smile played around the corners of her mouth.

Michael grinned and trailed the tip of his finger down the subtle hollow of her spine. Her body felt like it existed just for his touch.  “How do you become queen, then?”

She touched his cheek and relearned the geometry of his jaw. “Farcical aquatic ceremony or some rot like that.”

He captured her hand in his and kissed it. “I haven’t had a shower since I’ve been home. Want to have an aquatic ceremony of our own?”

She rested her forehead against his lips for a moment and then smiled at him, fluttering her eyelashes in a playful mockery of sweetness. “Do I get to hold your sword aloft?”

“Yes. You may not be queen of Iceland, but you’re my queen.”

She made a gagging noise and collapsed against the blankets again.

“A bit much, huh?”

“More than a bit.”

Her shirt had ridden up in all of her tormented flailing and he blew a noisy kiss onto her stomach. “Come on, little Queen. You can stand on the stool and wash my back.” He crawled over her off the foot of the bed, making sure to hook his leg around her and drag her with him. They ended up in an unceremonious heap on the floor.

She wriggled out of the spaghetti confusion of arms and legs and sat on him. “I can stand on the stool and you can wash  _my_  back.”

“I like washing your front.” He leered up at her roguishly and reached for her breasts but she blocked his hands. Apparently he had become predictable.

“Whatever.”

“I like washing your whatever, too.”

That broke her reserve and she giggled. “Come on, old man. Let’s get you watered and fed.” She pushed against his shoulders as she stood up.

“Old man?” He scrambled to his feet and grabbed her. With one easy movement he tossed her over his shoulder and headed towards the en suite. “I’ll show you old man,” he muttered.

“Is that what you’re calling him now?”

He swatted her bum. “Would you rather I call it Excalibur?”

“What is samite anyway?”

“I have no idea.” He set her on the counter and she pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. It took him a second to turn on the water in the shower and then he stripped out of his clothes and tossed them towards the hamper. When he turned back around, she was still sitting there motionless. “Baby? You alright?”

She shook her head like she was working her way free from an ensnaring dream. “Yeah. Just feeling a little emotionally naked.” Her smile was shuttered and dark, like an abandoned cottage under a new moon.

“Okay. Take your time. Or, you know, you can shower with your clothes on if you want.” He winked at her and entered the shower.

His eyes were closed and his head tipped forward as he stood under the water, letting the pulsing pressure beat out the knots of too many short nights and long shoots, when cooler air brushed against his thighs. He smiled at the warning that Halla was joining him. Her arms wrapped around him and she pressed herself to his chest.

“Thank you for yelling at me.”

He hugged her. Her shirt dampened from the contact. His arms tightened and he kissed the top of her head. “It’s not my favorite way of talking to you, but I’m glad it helped.”

They held each other for a while longer, washing off the anger and the separation and leaving them clean and connected again.

Halla sighed loudly and looked up at him, tipping her head back as far as she could so she could actually see his face. “I’ll punch you in the nuts if you tell anyone about my twitter.”

Michael laughed and kissed the tip of her nose. “I’ll never betray your secrets, Halla. You can trust me.”

“Yeah, I know,” she muttered, and then pressed her forehead to his sternum again.

Michael swayed with her, stroking her back and singing “Stand by Me” in increasingly ridiculous fashion until her cheeks pressed against him from a smile and her shoulders shook under his hands from attempting to repress laughter. He dipped her as part of the grand finale and her foot slid out from under her. His grasp on her slipped and he grabbed for her and the wall at the same time, trying to keep them both from falling over. They awkwardly collapsed to the floor, one limb at a time, until they were both prone. Halla looked up at him with wide eyes and began to laugh. Her face flushed as she continued laughing until tears mixed with the droplets of water falling off of his hair and landing on her.

“It’s “Stand by Me,” goober, not “Fall Over by Me.”

Michael laughed and kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around him, and he kissed her again, and she hooked her legs around him, and he kissed her once more, and she kissed him in return, and she might not have been the Queen of Iceland or even the Lady of the Lake, but she was his queen, and the lady of the shower and the water grew cold before they were done with their aquatic ceremony. This one wasn’t a farce, though. It was honest and true.

This one was love.


	17. Think Fast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When the world is melting down around me, I want to escape into a story. This is for you, in case you, too, need to escape.

Michael congratulated himself on getting the first batch of pancakes perfectly cooked. Usually, they ended up underdone, but these were golden and puffy. He almost called up the stairs to ask Halla if she wanted bacon, too, but stopped as he realized the idiocy of that question. Of course she wanted bacon. She never turned down food. He got the packet out of the refrigerator and opened it, humming to himself as he puttered around the kitchen. Soon, rashers of bacon covered half the griddle and pancakes cooked on the other half, tiny bubbles rising through the batter and rupturing on top. He flipped one pancake when he saw Halla standing in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Hey baby, the smell finally wake you up?”

She shook her head as he flipped over another pancake.

Still non-verbal. Well, he had the answer for that. He pushed a few buttons on the coffee maker and went back to flipping the pancakes as the machine hissed and spit. It usually took at least one cup to get her to the point where she would communicate. The second batch of pancakes was ready to come off by the time he looked at her again. She still stood motionless in the entry way, wearing one of his faded old t-shirts with holes around the neckline and glittery nail polish. “Do you want to sit down? I can fix you a plate.”

She shook her head again. Her eyes were wide and she didn’t seem to be blinking, which was quite different from her usual morning semi-comatose behavior.

“Are you okay, baby?”

“Think fast!” She flung something at him and ran.

He grabbed the small object flying through the air, wondering what she was up to this time. A new variation on tag? A redo of marshmallow guns? Was this his ammunition? Upstairs their bedroom door slammed shut. She was obviously taking a defensive position. He opened his hand to see what she had given him.

He stared for a few seconds and then pulled the griddle off of the hob. “Halla?” he called. “Will you come down here, please?”

There was no answer.

“Halla!”

Again no answer.

He took the stairs two at a time and headed straight for the bedroom. The door was locked. “Halla, open the door, please.”

“Are you going to yell at me?”

She sounded like she was under the blankets and he couldn’t help but smile. “No, I’m not going to yell at you, baby.”

After a few seconds he could hear her moving around and then the door unlocked with a click. By the time he got it open she had already run back across the bedroom and he caught a fleeting glimpse of her before she disappeared in the bed again, yanking the blankets up over her head.

He found himself smiling again at the ridiculousness of the situation.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, and after a brief but spirited tug of war, uncovered his wife. He held up the small white stick. “Is this yours?”

She looked at him like he was an idiot. “No, I threw someone else’s pregnancy test at you. Yes, it’s  _mine._ ”

He took a deep breath. He had been fairly sure that it was, but he had thought that was a good place to start. “You’re pregnant.” The words dropped from his mouth like rocks.

She screwed her eyes shut. “Yes,” she squeaked.

“How?”

Her eyes came open on that one. Again with the idiot look.

“I mean, I know  _how_ , but I thought you were on the pill.”

“I told you I went off it for the surgery and then when you got home we had a fight and you said you didn’t want to, but then we made up and we had sex and you didn’t use a condom so I thought you were okay with it again, but then I started thinking over the last few days maybe you had forgotten about the pill part because you were so angry – justifiably so,” she hastened to add, “and now I am and I can’t figure out whether or not it’s good news.”

He had seen her open emails from journal editors and grant committees with less trepidation than now showed on her face. “You’re pregnant.” He knew he had already said that, but he needed to say it again. He needed to say it out loud to determine how it made him feel.

“Yes.” She had sat up, but now she pulled the blanket up to her chin.

“You’re going to have a baby.” A warm trickle of something began to flow inside him.

She was looking at him like a dog she had just found and wasn’t sure if he was friendly or going to bite her hand off. “Yes.”

“ _My_  baby. You’re going to have my baby. Our baby.” The warm trickle was turning into a flood. “My baby is going to have our baby.” He grinned and then laughed and then rubbed at eyes that were suddenly wet. “We’re having a baby.”

The wet eyes seemed to be contagious, and she wiped at her cheeks. “Yes. We’re having a baby.”

He grabbed her and pulled her into his lap and kissed her over and over. “We’re having a baby.” His hand worked its way under her shirt and rested over her stomach. “There’s a baby in there.” He sounded in awe.

“You’re not mad?”

“I had honestly forgotten about you going off the pill, but no. No, I’m not mad. How could I be mad?” He squeezed her stomach gently. “You’re pregnant with my child. It makes me feel very manly. I think I need to go chop down a tree and build a cradle now.”

Halla giggled and kissed him.  “There will be time for cradle building later.”

He kissed her, over and over again, and soon her shirt was on the floor. He reached for her knickers and then froze. “Is this safe?”

“Having sex? Yes, it’s safe.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to poke the baby in the head.”

Halla’s eyes sank shut and she shook her head in dismay. “That’s not the way it works.”

“How do you know? You’re not that kind of doctor.”

“Well, first, your penis isn’t  _that_  long.”

He made an offended noise.

“I know, you’re not used to hearing that, but it really isn’t. The baby is like the size of a lentil and it’s floating inside a water balloon inside a giant padded ball. You can’t hurt the baby.”

He squinted at her. “You’re positive?”

“Yes, I’m positive. Do you want to call your sister and ask her?”

“She’s a neuropsychologist, not a medical doctor.”

“Exactly, she can tell you that you’re crazy.”

A sharp bark of laughter.  “Oh, is that the way you want to play this?” He tickled her and she giggled hysterically as she tried to get away from him. Her efforts inevitably failed and he pinned her to the bed with his body, stroking the hair back from her face. “I love you, baby.”

“I love you, too.”

“I was talking to the other one.”  She screwed up her face in irritation and he laughed. “I love you, Halla. Even when we have a child, you’re still going to be my baby.”

“Good.” She kissed him once on the mouth and again on the chin.

He slid over so he was next to her and rested his hand on her stomach again. Hers sought his out and they held hands over her belly. “Now that you know I’m happy, what are you feeling?”

It took her a few seconds to answer, but when she did, she was looking him in the face. “Happy. A little terrified, but mostly happy.”

He interlaced his fingers with hers. “What’s the scary part?” As surreal as this whole thing was, that she was lying next to him talking about her fears was perhaps the most unfamiliar.  Her body didn’t even feel tense like she was fighting the urge to flee.

“Gestating a human being and then squeezing it out. This doesn’t sound like it’s going to be very comfortable.”

“Probably not. If you don’t want to do—”

“I do. I want to do this, but it’s going to be scary and hard and I’m going to have to ask for help and,” she sighed heavily and smushed her face into his chest, “we all know how fantastic I am at that.”

“Whatever you need, I’m here for you.”

She didn’t say anything, but snuggled into him, resting her forehead against his chest. He was just about to slide his hand from her stomach to someplace a bit lower when she sat bolt upright.

“You were making bacon!” She jumped out of bed and headed quickly towards the door. “I’m eating for two now, you know.” She winked at him over her shoulder and headed downstairs.

He fell back against the bed and stared at the ceiling, a goofy smile on his face. He was going to be a dad. They were going to have a baby. Even with the test resting on the bed next to him, it all seemed a bit unreal. Then he got up and headed downstairs. If Halla really was eating for two, he’d need to make another batch of pancakes. And maybe go to the market for more bacon.


	18. Home Movies

Michael stared at the grainy black and white image. The radiologist had paused the cursor and was looking at them both with a smile. Her words, “It looks like a girl,” were echoing in his head, louder than one of those THX notices they used to play before films. A girl. They were having a girl. He’d thought about what it would be like having a daughter, but it had always been in an abstract way, like when he was reading a script to see if it was something he was interested in pursuing. Now the thought of having a daughter was like watching a film in high definition and 3D. There was going to be an even tinier blonde running around his house, wreaking havoc and wrapping his heart around her tiniest finger.

He looked at Halla who was still staring at the monitor. He squeezed her hand and her head jerked towards him. Her eyes locked on his, her expression wavering between joy and terror.

“It’s a girl.”

Michael nodded at Halla’s barely audible whisper. Something was wrong. He could feel it in the way her fingers spasmed as they held hands, see it in the flutter of her eyelashes. Her breaths rasped, quick and erratic.

“We’re having a girl, Michael.”

“One more reason for you to buy pink and glitter,” he teased, trying to ward off the panic attack inexplicably bearing down on the woman stretched out on the examining table, her belly rounded like a child’s football.

Her fingers hooked into the front of his shirt like claws and she pulled him closer. “What if… what if what happened to me…what if it happens…”

He bent the rest of the way over and kissed her softly, stopping the words before she gave any more thought to her fears. He rested his forehead against hers. “I’ll keep her safe, okay? You teach her about the stars, and I’ll keep her safe.”

Tears flooded her eyes, and she blinked them back, staring at him intently, even though neither of them could focus with as close as they were. One crystalline drop slipped over the rim and down her cheek. He caught it before it dripped into her ear, kissing it away.

“I’ll keep her safe, baby. I’ll keep both of you safe.”

She nodded shakily and looked at the screen again. Her lips trembled for a moment and then she smiled, slowly, the joy overtaking her face like sun rising over the mountains before finally flooding the valley below.

“We’re having a girl, Michael.” She curved her hand over her stomach and then grimaced at the sticky feel of the ultrasound gel. She wiped it off on the crinkling paper lining the exam table, and then grinned up at him. “And you thought there was a lot of pink in our house already.”

He laughed and turned back to the radiologist. “I’ll give ya twenty quid if you can make that be a boy.”


	19. Unpredictable

Michael had participated in lots of different living arrangements over his life. With his parents first, obviously, and then with some friends when he matriculated at the Drama Centre in London. His first big paycheck had been put to getting him a place of his own, where he had lived quite comfortably, by himself or shared with girlfriends as they had come and gone. He had liked that flat, where everything was predictable and the same and held no surprises. He knew when he came home at night what he would find, even if it was just dirty laundry and an empty fridge.

That is, he had enjoyed it, until the paragon of unpredictability had moved into his life, his house, and his heart.

He would never trade Halla for some peace and quiet, even though it would be nice to know what was going on when he walked into a room in his own house once in a while. For example, right now, when he walked into the bathroom to find his wife, naked except for a pair of star spangled underwear, standing on a stool and painting her belly.

“Do I even want to know what you’re doing?” He honestly wasn’t sure, and considering this wasn’t the oddest thing he had ever found her doing, his curiosity wasn’t insatiably piqued.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” She tilted her head to the side as she regarded her reflection in the mirror. Then she bent over, got a bit more red paint on her brush, and added to the oval adorning the lower left side of her stomach.

Michael watched for a minute as she added streaks of white and beige and russet. “If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say you’re painting your stomach to look like Jupiter.”

Her grin was incandescent. “Right! Head of the class, you are.”

“I have a good teacher.”

She frowned at her reflection. “Do you think I should paint Juno on my boob?”

He knew enough to know she was talking about a satellite and not the goddess for whom she was named. “Are you going to paint all the moons, too?”

“I’m not sure I have enough room on my boobs for that.” She found a smaller brush – Michael hovered as she bent forward to grab it off the counter, this really wasn’t safe as wobbly as she was – and dipped it in a jar of grey paint.

He breathed a sigh of relief when she got back upright without falling off the stool. “I can paint some of them on your back for you. Or on your bum.” He pinched one of the cheeks. “Right here. I’ll put Io. And Ganymede on the other one.”

This suggestion was met with a giggle. “They won’t show up in the picture.”

He looked at her paint covered stomach and the tiny satellite now gracing her breast. Athena, that one.  “You’re going to take a picture of this?” And if so, could he have a copy?

“Of course. I took pictures of all the others.”

“Others?” There were others?

“I’ve been doing one planet a month, in order of size. For Pluto, I painted my belly button. They’ve been getting bigger as my canvas has grown. And with all the practice contractions I’ve been having, I thought I should probably get Jupiter done while the pumpkin was still inside.”

“Were you ever going to share these pictures?”

She shrugged and added a moon to her other breast. Aphrodite. “Maybe. I just thought maybe I would like to have some mostly nude photos of me that I was in control of.” Her eyes flickered to his and he could see her sudden tension in the new tightness around her mouth. She went back to painting, turning to the side so she could see her profile. It required another dab of paint.

He realized he was intruding on something very important and private and kissed the small of her back. “You have fun. Be careful.”

She smiled at him, and he left. He would use a different bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, Halla waddled into the kitchen, covered in paint and with the camera in her hand. “I’m done. Can you put this in the hospital bag?”

“Sure.” He put it on the counter; the hospital bag was by the front door and he’d put it there when he was done making lunch.

“You should probably do that now, because I just discovered water on Jupiter.”

He frowned at her. “What?” When had she been studying Jupiter?

“My water broke.”

He looked at her closer and then bent over a bit to check. Yep. Her knickers were definitely wet. “Okay,” he said, feigning calm, though his hand trembled as he grabbed the camera, “I’ll go put the camera in the bag, and then we’ll go get you a shower and dressed, and then off to hospital we’ll go, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed with equanimity. She grabbed a few biscuits from the jar on the counter and waddled off towards the stairs.

He watched her for a moment and then headed towards the front door.

“Let’s call her Juno!” Halla shouted down the stairs.

Michael grinned and shook his head a few times. If he didn’t know what to expect with one unpredictable female around the house, he sure wasn’t going to know what to do with two of them. And he found that he was completely okay with that.

His life was perfect.

Perfectly unpredictable.


	20. The Song and the Silence

Michael leaned against the closed door as he faced off against Dr. Miles. A nurse glanced at him with a start of recognition as she hurried by and the cries of a laboring woman echoed from down the brightly lit hall.

“This isn’t what she had planned for her birth,” the doctor was saying.

As if he wasn’t aware of that. Michael submerged his frustration and shrugged. “She changed her mind.”

“She realizes that if I don’t start an epidural soon, she won’t be able to have one at all, doesn’t she?”

Condescending bastard. “My wife is brilliant, and you’ve told her that four times already. So yes, she realizes that.”

“Fine. I’m not coming back though. If she sends me away now, she isn’t getting an epidural.”

Michael doubted that. It would be against hospital policy to allow an anesthesiologist to refuse treatment for non-medical reasons, and even if it weren’t, there were enough other anesthesiologists that would respond to an emergency call backed up by a hefty cash gift that Halla would get whatever she wanted.

The doctor made a rude noise as Michael stared at him impassively, and then stormed off down the hall in the opposite direction the nurse had gone previously. Michael rubbed his hands over his face and then opened the door. The room was dimly lit, and Halla was resting on her hands and knees on the bed. She’d been pacing when he had left to face down yet another medical professional on her behalf. He didn’t say anything. She had told him he wasn’t allowed to say anything several hours earlier. He didn’t stroke her back or tuck her hair behind her ear. She had also told him he wasn’t allowed to touch her. His role, a very different one than they had both envisioned during the previous months, was to keep everyone else out of the room. She had turned her back on medicine, on science, even on him it seemed, and wanted to be left alone. Completely and totally alone.

Her motion stopped and his hands clenched into fists as a soft whining sound came from her. It quickly cut off, replaced with short panting breaths. His nails dug into his palms as she continued, cutting into the marks he’d left there already this evening. He knew she must be proving something to herself by insisting on doing this all alone, but it wasn’t just his hands hurting as he watched her labor.

A knock at the door interrupted his watch, and he opened the door just wide enough to see her nurse, a woman that looked reassuringly like his mother, and had the same no-nonsense directness and warm familiarity that she possessed as well. Ailis had backed up Halla’s decision to refuse all medical treatment and monitoring, as long as Halla let her come in every thirty minutes to check on the baby’s heartrate with a stethoscope. No electrical monitors, not internal checks, no needles, no IVs connecting her to poles that she would restrict her movement in any way. Ailis smiled at him and then moved to Halla. Without talking, she maneuvered the nightgown Halla had insisted on wearing instead of the standard hospital gown – it was raspberry pink and the snaps were stars – so that she could place her stethoscope against Halla’s stomach. About thirty seconds later, she replaced Halla’s gown so she was covered again, and then came back to him. She smiled reassuringly, which made him relax a fraction.

“Ninety seconds.” He mouthed the words to her.

“Soon,” she mouthed back, patted his arm, and then left again.

Halla whined, and then panted again. Her breaths rasped.

This baby couldn’t come soon enough.

* * *

This hurt like hell. She knew it was supposed to hurt, and it had been hurting for a while, but now it _hurt_. There wasn’t a break in between contractions anymore. Those few precious moments where she could relax for a moment and gather her strength for the next contraction were gone, and she didn’t know if she could do it anymore. She wasn’t just in pain; she was tired, too. Exhausted. She wanted to push, but she didn’t know if it was safe. Her pregnancy had been completely without complications and she knew this was what her body had evolved to do, but it _hurt_. It hurt and she was scared. Without realizing what she was doing, she reached out her hand. Instantly, Michael was at her side.

She gripped his hand for a second. “Get Ailis.”

He didn’t move and she was about to yell at him to go get the fucking nurse when a voice came over the speakers. He had pushed the call button.

“Rub my back,” she chanted repeatedly until his hand found the right spot and massaged the aching muscles. Oh, that felt so nice. At least it felt nice in that half a second where everything hadn’t coalesced into a flaming ball of pain. She should have had him do this earlier.

She _could_ have had him do this earlier. It hadn’t been her plan to make him stay across the room the entire time, but when the attendant had rolled her into the labor room, the smell had been so familiar – that distinctly medical aroma of plastic and antiseptic wash – that she had immediately flashed back to her last stint in hospital, when she had ended Patrek’s life as he knew it, and tried to end what remained of hers.

And the last thing she wanted was anyone else touching her.

And the last thing she felt like she deserved was anyone’s help.

“You asked for me, dear?”

Halla opened her eyes to see Ailis. The pink garbed woman smiled with the embodiment of motherly kindness and love. She looked nothing like her own mother, and that helped her admit that she didn’t know what she was doing.

“I feel like I want to push.”

The nurse smiled at her. “Then push!”

“Really?”

“Your body knows what it’s about.”

“I won’t hurt her?”

Ailis reached to pat her hand but stopped. Instead she smiled again. “If you want, I can check you internally to verify you’re fully dilated, but that’s your choice.”

Halla hesitated for a moment. She didn’t want anyone touching her, especially internally. She had put up with it during her doctor’s appointments, but today she had just wanted to be left alone.  It was strange enough enough having another person inside her without allowing another person to be sticking their hand up her vagina, and there had been lots of fingers and tools and whatever else up there in the last several months. But this part, unlike so much of pregnancy, was under her control. This was to keep her daughter safe.

“You can check.”

Compared to contractions combined with an overwhelming urge to push, the brief exam was almost unnoticeable.

“You’re ready to push,” Ailis said, from somewhere near her feet. Even without seeing her, Halla knew she was smiling again. She could hear the confidence in the woman’s voice. The confidence Ailis had in her.

“Right now?” She had spent the last three hours begging for it to be over, but now that it almost was, she was scared of the small part left in front of her.

“When you feel like pushing, you push. I’m going to push this button and fetch your doctor.”

She hadn’t seen her doctor in hours. Why was Ailis fetching her now? “Is something wrong?” If she had been hooked up to monitors, her heartrate would have shown a rapid acceleration.

Ailis smiled reassuringly at her. “No, but someone needs to catch the baby.”

* * *

Michael helped Halla shift into a squatting position. He wasn’t sure she’d make it all the way through delivery like this, but Halla had determined this was the most scientifically advantageous position for birthing, and he wasn’t going to argue science with her. She had come to this decision over a rather intimate luncheon with a biomechanics professor, and he tended not to disagree with decisions she came to while at Cambridge.

Her obstetrician, Dr. Hobson, who had been attending her for the entire pregnancy, came into the room a minute later. Ailis had been keeping the doctor updated on Halla’s progress, since Halla had kicked her out after her first visit, along with every other nurse except for Ailis, who had somehow managed to convince her that she was on her side. Halla took one look at her physician and pointed to the corner.

“You can stay over there. Ailis will catch the baby, and you will be quiet unless Ailis tells you you’re needed.”

Dr. Hobson didn’t bother arguing; she simply held up her hands and retreated to her designated corner. She had exhausted her desire to argue when Halla had first demanded she go away several hours ago.

He had been frustrated when she had sentenced him to the corner. Now that she wanted his assistance, he was scared of doing something wrong. They had attended childbirth classes together, but had spent so much of the time whispering jokes that now he was certain he had completely missed the important parts. Of course, he had been under the assumption that she would have had an epidural, which meant they had planned on skipping this screaming part. He would have definitely appreciated skipping this screaming part.

He was fucking certain that Halla would have appreciated skipping this screaming part.

* * *

Halla had planned on skipping the screaming part. To be honest, she had planned on skipping the pain part. She had endured enough pain in her life that she didn’t feel like she needed to prove it to herself that she could endure natural childbirth, too. And this pain was worse than anything she had ever felt. Even at the worst of it before, she had been so numb from all the alcohol and other drugs she was on that she had felt more absent than in pain. The worst hurt had been emotional. She didn’t think there were good epidurals for emotions.

Now, however, it was purely physical. All those women who talked about how you forget how bad labor hurt once it was over were lying sacks of shit. Absolute shit. Gobshite, as Michael would have said. No one, no matter how hard she tried, could forget this pain. It was currently rewriting her DNA to make sure that she would never ever forget this moment.

This hurt worse than breaking her arm. She would gladly break her own arm right now if it meant labor could be over. Snap it right off. There had to be a bone saw or one of those rib spreader things from hospital shows around here somewhere that she could use. It was a hospital, after all. Well, a birthing center. There probably wasn’t much call for bone saws and rib spreaders in a birthing center.

That tangential thought quickly disappeared in the face of another urge to push.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

“This is all your fault,” she hissed out, when she was done screaming.

“I know.”

“I wasn’t meant to breed with great hulking beasts like you. I’m delicate and spritely, your mum said so.”

“And my mum is always right.”

The conversation paused as she screamed again. The screaming seemed to help. Also swearing. She wasn’t sure if she was swearing out loud or in her head, and frankly, she didn’t give a fuck. Anyone offended by her language right now could go the fuck away.

Fuck fuck fuck.

She grabbed the front of his t-shirt and hauled him closer so she could glare right in his eyes. “Don’t you fucking dare leave and make me go through this by myself.”

“I won’t.”

“I will jump off this table and tackle you to the floor if you try.”

He had the audacity to grin at her. “I’d like to see that.”

“Don’t tempt me. It’s your fault I’m like this, you know.”

Another pause for screaming and swearing punctuated their conversation.

“It’s not entirely my fault,” Michael pointed out. “You participated.”

“A bit. A very little bit.”

“That’s right, baby. You’re the little bit and I’m the big bit.”

Halla snorted. And then she laughed. And then she rested her head on Michael’s chest and cried. This time she didn’t feel the urge to swear as she pushed, and she didn’t scream either. She was quiet, focused on how her body was working to bring her daughter – their daughter – into the world.

It was quiet enough that she heard Michael begin singing, songs from their reception, old Irish folk songs, “All of Me” like he had sung at their birthday party, songs he only knew because she played them at full volume while dancing around the house. He kept singing, and she kept pushing, and he stroked her back and her hair and kissed her brow, until the song and the silence were added to by the sound of a baby’s cry.


	21. The Size of a Waiting Universe

Halla would argue with him, but Michael knew that the universe weighed just over six pounds. That was the weight of the infant cradled in his hands. He’d played a parent before. Shitty parents, parents trying their best, indifferent parents. But this wasn’t a role. He was a father. A dad. Every nerve ending flared raw and exposed. The lights were brighter, the sounds crisper, the scent of newborn baby more sacred than the incense from when he had been an altar boy. She squeaked and his heart stopped for a moment. Her rosebud of a mouth pursed a few times with the dream of suckling, and then she stopped, sleeping in a curled up ball he could hold in two hands.

This was brutal, to be ripped from one reality into a new one with so little warning. Nine months wasn’t nearly enough time to prepare for his skin being removed and replaced with this new body that felt everything so intensely. He would kill for this child. His child. With absolutely no remorse. The only other person who had ever aroused this intensity in him was Halla, and with her it had come on gradually. Holding his baby was a heart attack.

He looked at Halla, curled up in a ball much like Gía, sleeping in the hospital bed. She somehow looked gorgeous despite the dark circles under her eyes. She glowed like one of her stars, even in slumber.

He was wrong, he realized. The universe didn’t weigh six pounds. It was more like 120. He wasn’t sure what Halla tipped the scales at now that she’d given birth. He crawled into the bed next to her, keeping Gía in one arm. The crib could stay empty for a while longer. He wanted to hold the universe in his hands.

Halla made a quiet noise and moved against him without fully waking. His chest became a pillow. Her foot drifted along his calf in the peaceful quiet of the recovery room. He rested Gía on his chest and kissed the top of Halla’s head. Once they were all comfortable, he covered them all with a blanket. With one arm he held his wife and with the other he cradled his daughter.

His whole universe.

One hundred twenty pounds and the size of a hospital bed.  

* * *

This time was different.

Her fears had dissipated the moment Gía had been placed in her arms. She was perfect. Absolutely perfect. And beautiful. So beautiful. Indescribably beautiful.

And perfect.

She had given birth to a perfect baby. Her body had worked. It hadn’t betrayed her as it had so many times before. She had done it. Nine months of work and dedication and terror and feeling invaded and vulnerable and like a host for an alien parasite.

Nine months of fighting dysfunction and the urge to run away. She had needed Michael at the end, but that didn’t mean she had failed.

Needing Michael wasn’t a failure. Needing Michael was healing. She was healing.

Gía.

A whole new person.

A tiny new person, like a single star in the galaxy. Insignificant to everyone but the people who rotated around her. Her life’s orbit had just shifted. The binary system of her life had just acquired a new star. Things would never be the same. But they would be so much brighter.

Gía was a star. She had given birth to a star. Her body had done something miraculous. Something good.

Her body was good.

Halla shifted Gía to her other breast. The tiny mouth latched on and suckled.

She was nursing her daughter. Her tiny little constellation of stardust and love.

She had just added to the wonder of the cosmos.

Her body had done well.

Her daughter was perfect.

The universe spun on in all its mystery and glory, indifferent to the tiny star nursing so sweetly at her mother’s breast. But Halla knew the truth. The universe had become the smallest bit larger today. There was a Hallasdóttir in the world now. And someday the universe would sit up and take notice, but tonight, Halla kept her tiny star to herself.  

Galaxies would have to wait their turn.


End file.
